Stein will discuss “loopholes” in pending health care legislation that he claims will allow benefits to go to “illegal aliens.”

All five House members meeting with FAIR — Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Nathan Deal (R-Ga.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Sam Johnson (R-Tex.) and Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) — are members of the hard-line House Immigration Reform Caucus (IRC). The IRC is headed by U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), who is a former lobbyist for FAIR. In 2002, Bilbray told a group of anti-immigrant activists, “We are creating a slave class that criminal elements breed in.” He also warned, “We could have a terrorist coming in on a Latin name.”

FAIR has a decades-long history of anti-immigrant hatred. The group has employed key staff members with ties to white supremacist groups, accepted more than $1 million from a racist foundation dedicated to the study of racial differences in intelligence, and promoted racist conspiracy theories about Mexico’s secretly coveting the American Southwest. In 2006, a top official of FAIR in met with former members of a Belgian political party banned by that country’s highest court for “racism and xenophobia.” For more on FAIR’s long track record of hate, read here.

The group’s animus toward immigrants reaches all the way back to its founding in 1979. FAIR’s founder, current board member and intellectual leader, John Tanton, has repeatedly described contemporary immigrants as inferior. He has questioned the “educability” of Latinos and written that “for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.” In a letter to Roy Beck, head of NumbersUSA, Tanton wondered “whether the minorities who are going to inherit California … can run an advanced society?”

Stein recently defended Tanton, telling The Washington Post that Tanton is a “Renaissance man” of wide-ranging “intellect.”

It is unclear whether these elected officials are aware of FAIR’s racist track record. In October, another Republican congressman, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, came under fire by immigrants-rights advocates in his home district for participating in a September event put on by FAIR that featured live broadcasts by talk radio hosts. Ryan quickly issued a statement saying he did not endorse or support FAIR and had only granted a radio interview to discuss “health care reform and the Green Bay Packers.” According to Ryan’s statement, he had his name removed from FAIR’s website where it had been noted that Ryan took part in the FAIR’s event.

Luqman Ameen Abdullah (also known as Christopher Thomas), 53, was killed during a government raid on Oct. 28 when he refused to surrender and fired his weapon, according to an FBI news release. A convicted felon, Abdullah helped lead what the FBI characterized as a “radical fundamentalist Sunni group” called Ummah (“the brotherhood”). The group consists mostly of African Americans, some of whom converted to Islam while in prison. Its main goal is to create a sovereign state within America’s borders that would be governed by Islamic law and ruled by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (the former H. Rapp Brown), who’s serving a life sentence for murdering two police officers in Georgia. Abdullah was among 11 men linked to Ummah who were charged with conspiracy to commit an array of federal crimes, including theft from interstate shipments and illegal possession and sale of firearms.

Last week’s raid followed the eviction in January of Ummah members from their former mosque after they failed to pay property taxes. Inside that building, Detroit police found two firearms, roughly 40 knives and martial arts weapons, empty shell casings, and a concrete wall that had served as a shooting range.

Abdullah’s death led to criticism from several Muslim groups who say he was not the violent extremist that the FBI claimed. More than 1,000 people attended Abdullah’s funeral on Saturday at Detroit’s Muslim Center, where some speakers demanded an investigation into the shooting. Abdullah was imam (leader) of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, which called the FBI allegations “utterly preposterous,” according to The Associated Press.

Though Abdullah was not charged with terrorism, the 43-page complaint filed in federal court stated that he routinely preached against the federal government and law enforcement. Abdullah’s adherents often carried firearms and received training in their use, even though many were convicted felons. Confidential sources recorded statements by Abdullah indicating that “[he] and his followers view themselves as soldiers at war against the United States government, and against non-Muslims,” the complaint said. Among the alleged statements:

•    In February 2008, Abdullah said his followers must oppose the federal government, even if they die. He also praised Muslim suicide bombers.

•    During an August 2008 conversation with an FBI source, Abdullah stated the U.S. government controls everything. “We got to take out the U.S. government,” he said. “The U.S. government is nothing but Kuffars” — a derogatory term for non-Muslims. He added: “You cannot have a nonviolent revolution.”

•    While praying at the mosque in October 2008, Abdullah said Muslims needed to “cut the ties” with Christians, Jews and Kuffars. “The worst Muslim is better than the best Kafir,” he said (Kafir is the singular form of Kuffar). “We should be trying to figure out how to fight the Kuffar.”

•    In November 2008, Abdullah said he believed that the FBI perpetrated the Oklahoma City and the first World Trade Center bombings with the aim of blaming Muslims for the attacks.

•    In February 2009, Abdullah asked an FBI source to teach him how to make Trinitrotoluene (an explosive). In March, Abdullah gave the source a CD that the source characterized as “pro-Taliban propaganda.”

•    In May 2009, Abdullah preached that the group “hates[s] the Jews and that God hates the Jews,” the complaint said.

Abdullah met with followers in other cities, including Montgomery, Ala., and Gainesville, Ga. His longtime associate, Mohammad Abdul Bassir (also known as Franklin D. Roosevelt Williams), often served as Abdullah’s bodyguard during these trips, carrying a weapon even though he was a convicted felon, according to the complaint. Bassir, 50, blamed the U.S. government, President Bush and Jews for mistreating Muslims and discussed Sept. 11 conspiracy theories. “Bassir said brothers need to stick together and be willing to die for the cause, and blood needs to be shed in order to change things,” the complaint said. He’s currently serving a two-year prison sentence in Michigan.

An FBI source also saw Abdullah’s oldest son, 30-year-old Mujahid Carswell (also known as Mujahid Abdullah), beat young children with a stick while teaching them martial arts, the complaint said. Another source observed Luqman Abdullah “discipline children inside the mosque by beating them with sticks on their hands, knees and legs, until they were covered with bruises, including a boy Abdullah beat so badly with sticks that he was unable to walk for several days.”

William J. Bratton, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, explains why in this op-ed essay that ran last week in the Los Angeles Times. He also explains his decision not to have the Los Angeles Police Department participate in the program known as 287(g), which gives local law enforcement agencies the powers of federal immigration agents by entering into agreements with Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

“Americans want a solution to our immigration dilemma, as do law enforcement officials across this nation,” Bratton writes. “But the solution isn’t turning every local police department into an arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

Bratton brings to the immigration debate a few things the immigrant-bashers lack, namely credibility and a track record. As he prepares to step down as LAPD chief, he is drawing praise from officers, politicians and the public for reducing crime — in a city with a huge immigrant population.

“Keeping America’s neighborhoods safe requires our police forces to have the trust and help of everyone in our communities,” he writes. “Yet every day our effectiveness is diminished because immigrants living and working in our communities are afraid to have any contact with the police. A person reporting a crime should never fear being deported, but such fears are real and palpable for many of our immigrant neighbors.”

Bratton notes that the Police Foundation, a law enforcement research group, issued a report earlier this year concluding that when local police enforce immigration laws, it “undermines their core public safety mission, diverts scarce resources, increases their exposure to liability and litigation, and exacerbates fear in communities that are already distrustful of police.”

Jeremy Robinson, 37, was sentenced on Oct. 15 after pleading guilty to a felony charge of interstate transportation in aid of a racketeering enterprise, according to court documents. Though Robinson did not deal drugs, he tried to help his cousin distribute a large amount of marijuana. In court documents, Robinson acknowledged renting a car for another man to bring marijuana from Texas to Indiana. The man, a courier in the cousin’s large-scale drug business, picked up the load but failed to get far before he was pulled over by Texas police, who found 90 pounds of marijuana in the trunk. Robinson also let his cousin use his tattoo shop in Valparaiso, Ind., to receive shipments of marijuana from Texas.

Robinson was a founder of the now-defunct Outlaw Hammerskins, the group whose challenge in 1999 to the nationwide dominance of Hammerskin Nation signaled the beginning of the end of any unified skinhead movement. The Outlaw Hammerskins emerged after the Dallas-based leadership of Hammerskin Nation ordered an Indiana chapter of Northern Hammerskins to remove the “colors” (insignia) of a wayward member. Several Northern Indiana Hammerskins proceeded to beat the offender with a pool cue and threatened to burn off his Hammerskin tattoos with a blowtorch. The Dallas leaders ordered them to turn in their patches. A dozen or so of the Indiana crew left the Hammerskins to form their own renegade group, the Outlaw Hammerskins.

Under Robinson’s leadership, the group forged close ties with the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, even designing its structure, rules and patches to closely resemble the Hells Angels. Robinson also gave the moniker “Brown Eric” to Eric “The Butcher” Fairburn after pronouncing Fairburn “too brown” to be an Outlaw. (Fairburn was allowed to hang out with the Outlaw Hammerskins, however, and in 2003 he co-founded the Indiana-based Hoosier State Skinheads along with several former members of the Outlaw
Hammerskins.) Infighting caused the Outlaw Hammerskins’ demise in 2002, but not before the group had left its mark on skinhead culture by defying the once-unquestionable authority of Hammerskin Nation.

In court documents, Robinson said he joined a skinhead group in 1992 because he was upset about his parents’ divorce. The group “became his replacement family for a period of time,” according to a sentencing memo. Between 2000 and 2002, Robinson received two misdemeanor convictions for battery and one for driving while intoxicated. Tired of always being angry, he renounced skinhead life around the time the Outlaws disbanded seven years ago, the memo said. “Mr. Robinson notes that he has evolved from an angry, heavy drinking skinhead who routinely appeared in criminal court to a responsible father and businessman,” a judge wrote in another memo. The judge sentenced Robinson to 41 months in prison, 10 months less than federal guidelines recommended. As part of the plea agreement, three other drug charges were dismissed.

SPLC Senior Intelligence Analyst Laurie Wood contributed to this report.

In what may be the latest sign of simmering tensions in Florida between two prominent racist skinhead groups, two men suffered knife wounds this week during a speech by Holocaust denying historian David Irving at a luxury Palm Beach County hotel.

Irving spoke to about three dozen invited guests in a conference room he booked at the Ritz-Carlton hotel south of Palm Beach. During his talk on “decoding the Nazi message,” two men, Christopher Nachtman and John Kopko, stepped outside to argue and one of them pulled a knife, police say. A fight ensued. Furniture was broken and a carpet was bloodied. Both men were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment of knife wounds. No charges have been filed yet.

Irving is a longtime Holocaust revisionist. In 2000, he sued Emory University professor and Holocaust expert Deborah Lipstadt for libel in his homeland of Britain, after she accused of him of deliberate falsification. A London court declared Irving a pro-Nazi anti-Semite and “active Holocaust denier” and ordered him to pay all court costs. In 2006, he was imprisoned in Austria after pleading guilty to telling audiences that there were no gas chambers in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz. Irving subsequently backed off those claims. Earlier this year, he set up a website selling Nazi memorabilia. His visit to South Florida was the latest on a surreptitious speaking tour in the United States, in which Irving informs attendees of his venue at the last minute so as to thwart protestors.

Irving told Florida television station WPBF that Kopko initiated the attack, and that the fight had nothing to do with his lecture. He said his assistant witnessed the incident. “She said that she saw four people chasing one member of the audience out and beating him to the floor, and she said she thought they were going to kill him, but he pulled a knife from nowhere and stabbed one of these men repeatedly,” he told the TV station. “It was a personal feud, apparently, which goes back over the years, and I gained the impression, or so I was told, that three or four of these people had come in there with the intention of roughing him up,” he said. He doesn’t know Kopko personally, Irving added.

Postings on Stormfront, the leading white supremacist website, imply that Kopko, 43, is associated with Crew 38, the support group for the Confederate Hammerskins. A Stormfront poster using the screen name of “White Racialist” wrote after the incident, “John is a good man and a true soldier for the Cause, and has been for 20+ years … As for the lowly coward that pushed a knife into John’s BACK, no fate is too awful for you. You have to try a lot harder than that to kill Crew 38!”

Kopko was an official of the National Socialist White Workers Party in 1992 when he led a protest outside a West Palm Beach bookstore on the premise that the business sold pornographic material that promoted race mixing and homosexuality. That same year, he tried to get neo-Nazi publications placed in Palm Beach County libraries. A newspaper reported that he showed up at a meeting dressed like a Nazi storm trooper.

Nachtman, 31, is a former member of the once-prominent neo-Nazi group, National Alliance. He has used the screen name “Blutfahne” – German for “blood flag” – on Stormfront and VNN Forum. The latter is an online forum of Vanguard News Network, whose motto is, “No Jews. Just right.” He also posts under the screen name “Teutonic Legion” on Stormfront, and his avatar is the Volksfront logo. He has promoted Volksfront and Confederate Hammerskins events, and helped organize the February 2007 Volksfront Victory Achievement Conference in Missouri, where he spoke.

There have been numerous recent confrontations in central Florida that suggest a war is brewing between former longtime allies Volksfront and the Confederate Hammerskins. Michael Lawrence, one of the original founders of the Confederate Hammerskins in 1987, switched his allegiance to Volksfront in 2007, and became the group’s unofficial leader in Florida. Randal Krager, who co-founded Volksfront in 1994 while serving a prison sentence, moved from Portland, Oregon, to Florida with his wife and son to live next door to Lawrence.

Since Lawrence’s defection, his longtime friend and Confederate Hammerskins member, Richie Myers, has steadily gained power throughout the state as the group’s Orlando leader. Myers and his second-in-command, Coby Stonecypher, regularly associate with the Outlaws Motorcycle Club gang. Lawrence and Krager do not. A public indication of trouble brewing between Confederate Hammerskins and Volksfront appeared in a Stormfront posting advertising Volksfront’s annual Martyr’s Day event, to be held this year in Pensacola. The announcement said the gathering was “family friendly [by that we mean no drunks, no non-racial ‘clubs’, no deviate or degrading behavior].” Many readers took that as disapproval of outlaw motorcycle clubs attending recent white supremacist gatherings, which has happened at Confederate Hammerskins events.

A woman using the screen name of “Vidgis” hinted on Stormfront this week that the stabbing at Irving’s lecture reflected an escalation in tensions between the two skinhead groups. She wrote, “…the saddest part is how the various White Pride organizations are at war with one another. If we would turn that rage towards the real enemies, we’d be making real progress.”

Knifings and neo-Nazis aren’t the sorts of events or people that show up often in Manalapan, the affluent little coastal town where Irving spoke at the Ritz-Carlton. It has been home to the likes of famed criminal defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey, New Age musician Yanni and boxing promoter Don King. The 52-room oceanfront mansion of the widow of publishing heir Randolph Hearst fetched $22 million at a foreclosure auction last year. Monday’s fracas presumably was an atypical event at the Ritz-Carlton, whose website says it “has catered to the world’s most discerning guests,” and describes it as having “refined beauty” and a “graceful atmosphere.” The presidential suite runs a cool $3,000 per night. Hotel officials say the conference room where Irving spoke was reserved under the name of his book publisher in Great Britain, and they knew nothing about Irving.

Irving told local media that he was “deeply ashamed that this happened.”

What’s missing from the media hubbub are a few salient details about Wilson. The 56-year-old pastor from Idaho seems an odd booster for Christianity, considering that some of his views sound downright un-Christian. Wilson co-wrote a booklet called Southern Slavery, As it Was, which describes the institution in almost reverent terms. “Slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the [Civil] War or since,” Wilson wrote with co-author Stephen Wilkins, a founding member of the racist League of the South. “Slave life was to [slaves] a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care.”

The booklet ignited a controversy six years ago that roiled the community around Moscow, Idaho, where Wilson had established a religious empire that included a private Christian academy, an accrediting agency for Christian schools, an evangelical college, and a church with over 1,000 members. Hundreds of University of Idaho students demonstrated against Wilson, two local university presidents issued anti-racist statements, and two academic historians wrote a damning essay disputing the booklet’s portrayal of slavery.

In 2004, a retired philosophy professor at the University of Idaho uncovered another problem with Wilson’s book: At least 22 passages had been plagiarized from a discredited 1974 academic treatise. Canon Press issued an updated version of the book that corrected what Wilson termed a “citation problem” but continued to promote myths about slavery.

Wilson’s extreme views extend beyond race. He asserted that if a woman is raped, the rapist should pay the father a bride price and then, if the father approves, marry his victim. He told Christianity Today that exile (as opposed to death) might be an appropriate punishment for certain homosexuals. However, he’d support execution for cursing one’s parents and, in some cases, for adultery. He wrote in one of his books that the children of parents who don’t believe in Jesus Christ are “foul” and “unclean.”

Wilson doesn’t always practice what he preaches. Although he wrote in his 1999 book Fidelity that the penalty for child abuse should be death, he urged a sentencing judge to be lenient on a college student who had molested young children. The Moscow-Pullman Daily News reported in 2006 that people were upset because Wilson had failed to promptly notify families in his church about the student, who had spent time in their homes.

Wilson increasingly has found favor in mainstream Christian circles. The senior pastor of a 6,000-member Baptist church in Minneapolis recently invited Wilson to speak at a national conference marking the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth. In June, the prominent Christian right leader and Watergate ex-convict Charles Colson was on the program of a conference hosted by Wilson.

“Collision” had its genesis in a written debate between Hitchens and Wilson that was published on the website of Christianity Today. The exchange grew into a book called Is Christianity Good for the World?, which they promoted in several East Coast cities last fall. Filmmaker Darren Doane tagged along to shoot the footage for “Collision,” which premiers tomorrow and Thursday in New York and Los Angeles.

After President Obama declared a national emergency on Saturday to deal with the rapidly spreading illness, Stubblebine, a onetime intelligence officer, wasted no time e-mailing a dire warning to his members. The president’s declaration, he said, “is perhaps the most ominous domestic event I have ever encountered. We either take this hill, or we die on it.” He went on to state that Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia declared war on their own people. “Has the United States declared war on the American people today? Sadly, tragically, it would appear so. I do not wish to see the American population corralled, controlled and killed.”

H1N1, or swine flu, has never been a serious illness, Stubblebine says. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a different take. The flu is spreading fast in at least 46 states, has caused the hospitalization of about 20,000 Americans and the deaths of more than 1,000 people, the agency says.

Obama’s action gives Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius frightening authority to trample the rights of American patients, Stubblebine maintained. “None of this makes any sense UNLESS the intention is to replicate Hitler’s actions in Germany which used the all too willing medical system as a means to eliminate individuals, segments of the population and anyone who dared to speak out (or whisper) against the regime,” he wrote. Indeed, Stubblebine contends, the swine flu is a genetically engineered virus that is part of a World Health Organization-United Nations-United States scheme to sterilize untold numbers of people.

Not to be outdone, Stubblebine’s wife, Laibow, lent her name to a missive on the foundation’s website that says Sebelius now has the power “to send people to hospital-administered concentration camps.” She added that Obama’s declaration “puts the US on a par with Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia where the tyrants who declared war on their own people used the structures of the system to ‘justify’ and ‘legitimize’ their assault on the life, location and liberty of their citizens” and the government “now has its excuse to institute the corralling and culling of anyone it chooses.”

Fortunately, according to the husband and wife — who call themselves Gen. Bert and Dr. Rima — there is something ordinary citizens and future victims can do now: Send them money. They need financial backing for a “money bomb” to challenge the “entire vaccine approval travesty” and other projects.

Stubblebine and Laibow are veterans of the conspiracy-minded Patriot movement. Among other things, Stubblebine, whose interests include UFOs and parapsychology, insists that an airplane did not crash into the Pentagon in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He says he doesn’t know what did. They’ve appeared together at least twice on the Alex Jones Show, a forum for every government conspiracy theory ever hatched. Laiblow said in a July interview with Jones that the couple was “happy and privileged” to be on the show.

Stubblebine also supports or is a member of Oath Keepers, a conspiracy-minded organization composed primarily of active-duty and retired military and police officers that was founded this year.

Oath Keepers has a list of 10 orders it won’t obey. Its motto is, “Not on our watch!” Laibow cribs its language in creating her own “Health Care Worker’s Oath.” It concludes, “I am a health care professional, not an agent of State-mediated death and will conduct myself in accord with that identify. [sic] “I swear, to all future generations, ‘Never again’ will the health care professions be used, as they were in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Empire, to murder and oppress any individual. Never Again! Never here! Never on my watch!”

The full treatment — more than 5,000 words of it by reporter Scott North in The Herald of Everett, Wash. — provides the most extensive account to date of the lies, betrayals and self-promotions carried out over the years by Forde, 41, one of three people awaiting trial for the murders of Raul Flores, 29, and his daughter Brisenia on May 30 in Arivaca, Ariz., a town near the Mexican border. Police say she believed Flores was a drug smuggler and she planned to use any drugs or money she found in the home to support her Minuteman American Defense group.

The story provides example after example of how Forde, presenting herself as an energetic patriot with deep concerns about illegal immigration and border security, found a warm welcome in the Minuteman movement, “a loose-knit, fractious network that needed volunteers enough to set aside skepticism.”

One of the people interviewed for the story was a private investigator and security consultant named Mike Carlucci. Over the years, the story said, Forde described Carlucci to reporters and her Minuteman associates as “her link to legal muscle and even how she got dirt on her enemies.”

The story continued:

That is a lie, Carlucci said. It’s one of many that apparently went down easy in Minutemen circles, he said.

Some within the border-watch movement seem particularly susceptible to manipulation and fraud, Carlucci said. Their groups are largely volunteer, emotional about patriotism and love of country. They can’t agree how to conduct themselves and, he said, for some that ambivalence extends to whether they should follow the nation’s laws.

“I think it is a user-friendly environment for folks who aren’t necessarily accountable because there are not hard and fast standards of accountability,” he said.

As border patrollers, the story made clear, Forde and her band were generally hapless, disorganized and ineffective. Early this year, Forde tried to piggyback onto a better-organized, better-equipped patrol operation called Project Bluelight, operated by a former private investigator and onetime Marine named Joe Adams. Adams didn’t welcome the attention, as he indicated in a May 11 E-mail to Forde:

“Here is what I am suggesting. 1. Stop dropping mine and Project Bluelight’s name to give you and your amateur operations credibility. 2. Stay in Washington and off the border for the good of the movement. Shauna (sic), you are a dangerous sociopath and anyone who would listen to your (expletive) is an idiot. You do not know what you are doing, and you put people in the border movement in harms way. … Go away. Good luck in prison.”

The Herald has been tracking Forde’s antics for a long time. In February, after Forde suggested that Mexican drug cartels had targeted her for a series of violent attacks, the paper ran a profile that cast serious doubt on Forde’s claims, and summarized her troubled past, which included felonies starting from age 11 and repeated convictions for theft, burglary and prostitution.

Turner’s attorney, Michael A. Orozco, told the Hudson Reporter that his client will be under house arrest at his home in North Bergen, N.J., until his trial, which is scheduled to start Nov. 30 in Brooklyn. He is being electronically monitored and may not speak to the media or have Internet access.

Turner, 47, was arrested on June 24 after stating on his blog that three federal appeals judges that upheld a local Chicago handgun ban “deserve to be killed.” He is accused of listing their names, addresses, phone numbers and photos in subsequent online posts.

A few weeks after his arrest, Orozco confirmed that Turner had served as a paid FBI informant. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported Turner’s FBI connection a year earlier.

White, who founded the American National Socialist Workers Party, has been charged with threatening a newspaper columnist, a civil rights lawyer and others over the Internet and by phone. His trial is scheduled for Dec. 9 in Roanoke, Va., where he lives.

It’s hard to imagine an angry mob storming the gates of Limbaugh’s Palm Beach compound (market value, $48 million) and stringing him up from a palm tree. But twice Duke wrote that Limbaugh was lynched. And in a third reference, he conjured up the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings of 18 years ago, writing that Limbaugh was subjected to a “high-tech lynching.”

An estimated 4,743 people – nearly 73 percent of them black – were lynched between 1882 and 1968, according to the Archives at Tuskegee Institute. Still, Selwyn equates a grotesque and terrifying death at the end of a rope with robust debate over Limbaugh’s views, which Selwyn claims “are in fact very mainstream.”

“It’s quite a bit over the top,” says Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau and vice president of advocacy and policy. [The organization took no position on Limbaugh’s Rams ownership ambitions]. “Lynching was one of the earliest forms of domestic terrorism. Not only was it used to wreak havoc and fear, but to kill. It was used to send a chill to other African-Americans. Whatever is happening to Rush Limbaugh, it certainly is overly inflammatory to call this a lynching.”

Considering Duke’s other conclusions about the Limbaugh brouhaha, his lynching hyperbole isn’t surprising. A frequent guest on hate-radio host Michael Savage’s show and other far-right venues, Duke wrote in the same article that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was “one of the most maligned men in American history.” Limbaugh, he contends, is a victim of a new McCarthyism in which “closet communists” are quick to call their foes racists.

These are dark days for conservatives, Duke adds. “The reality is that conservatism is becoming the new communism, with those proclaiming the creed suffering increasing persecution for their beliefs,” he writes. “While in the ’50s you could be blackballed for being a communist, it’s now conservatives who must express their beliefs in whispers. [Limbaugh, Savage, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, et al are hardly whispering]. Limbaugh’s views are in fact very mainstream, yet he still was branded a heretic by today’s powers-that-be. So if such a lynching could be visited upon him, what about me? What about you?”

The Oath Keepers figured prominently in a recent special report by the Southern Poverty Law Center on the resurgence of the antigovernment militia movement. The report described the group as “a particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival.” Oath Keepers is fully on board with all the standard right-wing conspiracy theories, as evidenced by its official list of 10 “Orders We Will Not Obey,” in which it vows to resist any government efforts to “disarm the American people” or turn cities into “giant concentration camps.”

In July, the SPLC also presented Congress with growing evidence that extremists are infiltrating the U.S. military and urged Congress and the military to take steps to ensure that the armed forces are not inadvertently training future domestic terrorists.

A spokesman for the Defense Department, Lt. Col. Les Melnyk, confirmed that the uniform shown in the photo is an Army combat uniform, the kind worn by soldiers in Iraq. Army regulations stipulate that any uniform item not expressly authorized for wear is prohibited. But Melnyk noted that a Velcro-attached tab can be put on quickly for a photo-op and just as quickly removed. We’re guessing that not many soldiers are really parading around Mosul or anywhere else with these things on display.

Oath Keepers has scheduled a national conference this weekend in Las Vegas, hometown of the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes. The Las Vegas Review-Journal profiled Rhodes and the organization in a story on Sunday. The story included this quote from the SPLC’s Mark Potok: “I’m not accusing Stewart Rhodes or any member of his group of being Timothy McVeigh or a future Timothy McVeigh. But these kinds of conspiracy theories are what drive a small number of people to criminal violence. … What’s troubling about Oath Keepers is the idea that men and women armed and ordered to protect the public in this country are clearly being drawn into a world of false conspiracy theory.”

Rhodes and Potok also faced off last night on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews.”

And how does the Pentagon feel about Oath Keepers? “I don’t have a formal assessment of Oath Keepers for you,” Melnyk, the Pentagon spokesman, said in an E-mail. He noted that it is “a fairly new group” and said the Defense Department would defer to the judgment of the Department of Justice and the FBI. “Certainly if they were on an FBI list of gangs or groups espousing hate, DoD would find this a compelling reason for prohibiting membership.”

Melnyk provided the specific Defense Department regulation regarding prohibited extremist groups, and it clearly is aimed more at groups that discriminate based on such things as race, ethnicity or religion. Simple conspiracy theorists, for now, might get a free pass. The regulation reads as follows:

“Prohibited Activities. Military personnel must reject participation in organizations that espouse supremacist causes; attempt to create illegal discrimination based on race, creed, color, sex, religion, or national origin; advocate the use of force or violence; or otherwise engage in efforts to deprive individuals of their civil rights. Active participation, such as publicly demonstrating or rallying, fund raising, recruiting and training members, organizing or leading such organizations, or otherwise engaging in activities in relation to such organizations or in furtherance of the objectives of such organizations that are viewed by command to be detrimental to the good order, discipline, or mission accomplishment of the unit, is incompatible with Military Service, and is, therefore, prohibited.”

As the SPLC noted in its July report, however, the military services’ track record when it comes to disciplining or purging extremists in their ranks has been spotty. Here’s a story from Stars and Stripes, the independent military paper, based on the SPLC report.

Geert Wilders, who has repeatedly compared the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, was for months banned from Britain because of concerns that his anti-Islamic views would trigger violence. He held a press conference there on Friday after a court overturned the no-entry ban.

Although the Temple University event marks Wilders’ first visit to Philadelphia, he spoke in several U.S. cities during a visit to America earlier this year. In an April 27 speech in Miami, he said Europe was “on the verge of collapsing” due to an influx of Muslim immigrants. “The takeover of Europe is part of the global fight of Islam for world domination,” he said, according to a transcript of the speech that’s posted on Jihadwatch.org, an anti-Islam website. “Islam is not a religion. It is a political ideology. Islam’s heart lies in the Koran. The Koran is a book that calls for hatred, violence, murder, terrorism, war and submission.”

Because Islam is not a religion, according to Wilders, “the right to religious freedom should not apply to Islam.” He called for a moratorium on the building of new mosques and the closure of all Islamic schools because “they are fascist institutions.” He said anyone belonging to a “non-Western minority” should be required to enter into “a legally binding contract of assimilation.” He also asserted that Islamic culture is inferior to Judeo-Christian culture.

In February, he screened his anti-Islam documentary Fitna on Capitol Hill at the invitation of Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. Fitna shows verses of the Koran along with graphic footage of atrocities committed by radical Muslims, including the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“I think he’s arguably the world’s worst Islamophobe, but what is truly scary is his acceptance in the mainstream,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State
University, San Bernardino. “He’s unabashedly retrograde because he exploits deep-rooted fears about citizenship and security. His reprehensible, bigoted stereotyping of Islam completely mischaracterizes the beliefs of the overwhelming majority of the world’s Muslim adherents. [And] his totalitarian proposals are not only practically preposterous, but the most morally reprehensible that one could conceive of next to murder or forced conversion.”

At Temple, campus organizations have condemned the decision by a student group called Purpose to invite Wilders. Purpose’s president, Brittany Walsh, told The Associated Press that the event was “an opportunity for the students to really express and practice their freedom of speech.” Temple officials defended the right of student organizations to host controversial speakers.

Wilders’ appearance at Temple is financed by the far-right David Horowitz Freedom Center in California. Wilders also is scheduled to speak tomorrow at Columbia University in New York.

The year is 2011. President Obama has outlawed private gun ownership, dissolved the Constitution and set in motion a plan to join with Canada and Mexico in the “North American Union.”

Patriots to the barricades! Players in the game fight the Second American Revolution as militia commanders, training and amassing troops with the goal of capturing Obama and his evil allies.

Crooks and Liars, the liberal political blog, has posted this how-to-play video on YouTube.

GamePolitics.com, a blog about the politics of computer and video games, provides a fairly level-headed assessment of the game here (Scroll down to Oct. 16 posts).

Our capsule review: Pretty creepy.

The plan is for the two states to coordinate efforts to stop animal movement across their shared border to prevent the spread of disease to healthy animals. In the exercise, officials will try to prevent animals in their states from contracting hoof-and-mouth disease. The disease was last identified in the United States in 1929. While it poses no real threat to humans, it’s a highly contagious disease of cattle, sheep, swine, goats, deer and other cloven-hooved animals that causes painful blisters that make it difficult for them to eat and walk. An outbreak could be painful to the economies of Kansas and Oklahoma.

Thursday’s exercise will include the screening of traffic at two border locations: Near Sitka, Kan., and near Turpin, Okla. That has Infowars readers as nervous as pigs in a barbecue joint.

“The County Sheriffs in those states should EXERCISE THEIR POWER to ARREST ANY GOV’T THUGS WHO INTEREFERE WITH COMMERCE,” Underdog wrote.

“you can put alot of people in those cattle trucks. And the holes in the sides can be boarded up so you will not be able to see where they are taking you. My guess will be right to the insinerators,” warned longrange223.

“It looks like ‘THEY’ plan to release another foot and mouth virus but this time on Americas farms,” wrote AreYouKiddingME?. “Man it is just hard to see how these people ALWAYS have EVIL on their minds. For them it is 24/7/365 game of PURE EVIL! What is going to be comical is how fast and how far their god lucifer is going to throw them under the bus on judgment day.”

“GOOD VS EVIL. ANGELS & DEMONS. MAY THE FIGHT BEGIN!” added evil”cow”ards.

Such suspicions are a staple of Alex Jones and his fans, of course. In April, Jones publicized plans for a four-day exercise in Iowa in which the National Guard would conduct a mock search for an arms dealer. Guardsmen were going to knock on the doors of residents who agreed to participate in the drill. But the exercise was scaled back after officials got a deluge of angry calls from Jones’ listeners and readers.

If Kansas and Oklahoma officials are hoping to get people used to the idea of Big Brother searching their cars, it seems unlikely they would pick such remote regions to screen vehicles. Sitka is in Clark County, Kan., with a population of about 2,200 scattered across 960 square miles. Turpin is in Beaver County, Okla.,where about 5,400 people are spread out across 1,814 square miles.

That doesn’t matter, however, to Jones’ true believers in civilian concentration camps and a New World Order. “Time for your ‘civil disobedience’ to be conducted now with a loaded rifle on your shoulder!!!” Patriot 76 wrote. “Peaceful assembly is waste of time. Unfortunately, … we’ve now come to this.”

Lanzo told an Atlanta TV reporter recently the sign was a critique of current health reform plans, not a racist message. He showed off pictures of Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela on the walls of his restaurant, and a 2005 NAACP membership card as proof. Of course, there’s also a mannequin wearing a Klan robe in the eatery. And Lanzo has a history of racist ruminations. A few years ago, a sign outside his restaurant asked in response to the Michael Jackson pedophilia trial: “Is Michael Jackson not guilty because he is a nigger or money.”

Other signs have included messages such as “Damn Yankees may have taken our niggers but not our guns” and “Are most lawyers just a lower form of a nigger.”

Lanzo has hosted annual music festivals of neo-Nazi skinheads. His restaurant’s website includes an image of a caricature of a robed Klansman urinating on Obama. Still, he denies being a racist. He told a reporter in 2005 that, if he’s a racist, then he’s a racist against everybody. Indeed, there is evidence that Lanzo is an equal opportunity bigot. Among the other signs he has displayed: “Immigration reform, kiss my white ass, send all illegals home,” and, “Bush, lets kick some sand niggers ass.”

Not exactly food for thought.

This latest gimmick is somewhat of a departure for the rabidly anti-gay group from Topeka, Kan. For years, Westboro has been notorious for disrupting the funerals of fallen American servicemen, among others, saying God is punishing them because of the “fag-enabling” ways of their country. In April, however, the group started picketing synagogues and Jewish cultural institutions, saying the Jewish community and its religious leaders condoned homosexuality and abortion. Then, in June, Westboro members went one step further, producing music videos that demonize Jews — all Jews — with blatantly anti-Semitic parodies of popular songs.

The five videos aimed primarily at Jews feature the dubious talents of Westboro Baptist Church members and can be accessed from the group’s main website. In “Come Together,” the cut out heads of prominent Jewish figures such as Woody Allen and Madeleine Albright are made to lip-synch to the Beatles tune, whose lyrics now include the words “filthy Jews.” Grotesque caricatures of Jews that could have been ripped from Nazi propaganda posters flash on the screen, including a grinning man with a bloody knife in his hand. There’s also an image of a drowning Jew. Cut-out figures depicting Westboro members hold signs that read, “God Hates Fag Enablers” and “You will Eat Your Babies.”

In “Makes Us So Happy,” which predicts Israel’s destruction to the tune of “Hava Nagila,” two church members dressed to look like Hasidic Jews (with obviously fake beards and sideburns) growl as they fight over a penny. Afterward, with dollar signs dangling from their necks, they dance and count money. “The Beast — the one you worship/Obama — has no mercy,” they sing. (In case you’re wondering how Obama and his purported lack of mercy fit in, Westboro member Shirley Phelps-Roper told Hatewatch that the president will turn on the Jews. “There’s going to be an awful trauma, and you know who’s going to be leading those nations against Jerusalem? It’s the beast, the Antichrist Obama.”) Toward the end of the video, Westboro members — dressed like Old World Jews — join hands and dance in a ring. The women wear T-shirts emblazoned with the address of a Westboro website: JewsKilledJesus.com.

“Hey Jews” appears to be a big Phelps family sing-along, with lots of young children. Moms hold tots in their arms as they sway to the music. “Hey Jews,” they sing to the tune of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” “don’t hate your God,/Fag and dyke rabbis teach rebellion./You lie about the holocaust days,/The fruit of your womb – they’re little hellions.” They sing the final lines with particular enthusiasm: “Hey evil reprobate Jews/God hates you,/And you know it!”

Phelps-Roper, an attorney for Westboro, proudly confirmed that the church had created the videos. She said she’d tell anyone who called the videos anti-Semitic to “shut up” and said she’s doing Jews a favor by letting them know they’ll be destroyed if they don’t repent. “I’m telling you, those Jews are filthy,” she said.

For good measure, a few videos on the website also defame Catholics. “50 Ways to Eat Your Baby” features caricatures of lascivious priests, images of the pope, and a sign that reads, “Priests Rape Boys.” The lyrics, sung to the tune of “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” includes the words, “There must be 50 ways to eat your baby/50 ways to eat your baby/You just give ’em to the pope, dope.”

Phelps-Roper claimed she doesn’t keep track of how many people belong to Westboro. However, it’s estimated that the church has roughly 50 members, nearly all of them related by blood or marriage to Fred Phelps, the church’s aging leader.

His posts on YouTube put the lie to that professional image and expose him for the bigot he is. He repeatedly refers to blacks, including President Barack Obama, as “monkeys.” In one post, he uses the anti-gay slur “fag”; in another, he suggests that Van Jones, the black White House advisor who resigned last month, should be lynched.

It doesn’t take much detective work to find the offensive comments. On his documentary’s webpage, he links to his YouTube channel, which identifies his username as “Craigbe.” As “Craigbe,” Bodeker has made numerous comments on videos that other users have posted to YouTube. (He’s more restrained when commenting on excerpts from his own documentary.)

Below is a sampling of the uncensored Craig Bodeker. We thank an astute Hatewatch reader for alerting us to most of these comments.

Posted under Barack Obama Doesn’t Know Where He Met Michelle:

“…It’s all or nothing for Caucasian whites. If you’re not 100% white, you HAVE NO WHITE IN YOU.
Want proof?
The best definition of ‘white’ is someone capable of producing ‘white’ offspring. All of the ‘white’ you say exists within Obama … has been destroyed. Obama, nor any of his descendants, will ever again produce a white child.
We all must re-learn what ‘white’ really means. Not what blacks tell us it means.”

Posted under MonkeyBama – Funny Japanese Obama Parody:

“…The only way an advanced culture can PROOVE [sic] it’s not ‘racist,’ is for it to elect MONKEYS as public servants…”

Posted under Green Jobs Czar Van Jones Says White Polluters Steered Poison into Minority Communities:

“People give this guy shit for being a Black Supremacist, as well as a hater of White people… But he’s also a Fag!”

Posted under DefendGlenn.com: Obama Advisor Van Jones: Republicans are ‘Assholes’:

“Why are commentators acting surprised?
This is a TYPICAL BLACK MAN speaking!
He has a limited intelligence, but is CERTAIN of his Intellectual Superiority over us common-folk!
He’s been privileged all his life, yet he believes he’s PERSECUTED!
He HATES white men, but we don’t call it hate!
Wake-up America! Because these EVIL monkeys are DESTROYING the greatest nation ever built!”

“Gee, a hateful, ignorant African-American.
So where’s the story…?
Every city, county and state has TOO MANY OF THEM!
And our gummint say’s [sic] we’re ‘racist’ when we wish they’d just go away! (Possibly back to Africa?)
Wake-up America!
These are the REAL HATERS!
These are the NAZIS!
And the time is drawing near for good white people to hold HATEMONGERS like jones accountable for his poisoning of our nation. Possibly with the aid of a NOOSE!”

Posted under Chicago Trib Reporter Gives Honest Assessment of Obama:
“…There are just certain words YOU CANNOT USE when discussing black men!
Like that ‘N’ word…
And Boy….
And any ‘simian’ references; monkey, ape, gorilla, chimp, etc.
And gangster, gang-banger, thug…
No. In our nation where free speech is a RIGHT, we modify it, so as not to anger the ignorant and the violent!”

Posted under Obama: Bush’s Afghanistan Plan Not Enough:

“God what a stupid monkey!”

Since leaving Congress in January, though, he’s aggressively moving down the credibility chain in his quest for outlets for his nativist views.

In late September, he blasted the Southern Poverty Law Center from the hate website VDARE.com. And this month, he made his debut as a regular columnist at the far-right conspiracy-mongering website WorldNetDaily. By Tancredo’s standards, the initial column is somewhat restrained. He praises the “patriotic reawakening provoked by Obama’s Marxist agenda.” He attacks Sen. John McCain for his support of an insufficiently conservative U.S. Senate candidate in Colorado. And he takes a shot at Karl Rove, the longtime adviser to former president George W. Bush — the same Karl Rove who got so fed up with Tancredo’s extremism that he told him to “never darken the door of the White House again.”

But even when he enjoyed relative respectability as a member of Congress, Tancredo didn’t always confine himself to respectable venues. On Sept. 9, 2006, he delivered an anti-immigrant harangue as the honored guest at a barbecue advertised by the South Carolina chapter of the League of the South, the neo-Confederate outfit long listed as a hate group by the SPLC, as its own event. Although a Tancredo spokesman later said that the event was actually organized by a group called Americans Have Had Enough!, the league described Tancredo as “our guest” and listed a prominent league member as the event’s information contact. The room for the event was rented by Richard T. Hines, who was identified in 1997 by the racist League of Conservative Citizens as a member.

Contrary to its title, A Conversation about Race isn’t really a conversation about race at all, but a slick 58-minute documentary devoted to proving the thesis that racism is a bogus concept invented to oppress whites. Debut filmmaker Craig Bodeker — who appears in his documentary with a surfer-style blond ’do, collared shirt and jeans — is upfront about his project:

“I … can’t think of another issue that is more artificial, manufactured and manipulated than this whole construct called racism,” he says in a voice-over as the documentary begins.

Later, on camera, he continues: “This construct of racism is not an objective term. It has no concise definition. In fact, it’s used too often as a tool of intimidation, like a hammer, against Caucasian whites.”

Although we don’t believe that only whites can be racist, Bodeker’s efforts to refute the entire concept of racism are far from scientific. He interviews people he finds through a Craigslist ad (ambiguously titled “Ending Racism Now”) and on a street corner in Denver, Colo., where he lives. The interviewees, who represent a variety of races and ethnicities, earnestly answer Bodeker’s questions, clearly ignorant (at least initially) of his slant. When they say they see racism in their daily lives but fail to cite strong examples, the filmmaker feels justified in sticking a knife in racism. “All of these examples of this so-called racism that permeates our nation — none of them really amount to anything,” he says to the camera. Bodeker never says whether he believes that discrimination found by courts and government commissions also doesn’t “really amount to anything.”

As the documentary progresses, Bodeker asks his subjects whether black men are more skilled than white men at basketball. When some answer yes, but then refuse to say that whites score higher on standardized tests because they’re smarter, Bodeker has more ammunition. “I guess it’s OK to say that one race is better at something than another, as long as the one race is never white people,” he complains. He makes no effort to examine the scientific findings on intelligence and race, which have yet to produce convincing evidence that IQ differences are caused by genetics.

After trying to get interviewees to admit that blacks are more criminal than whites, he cites rape statistics in which black men were perpetrators and white women were victims. “If selecting people for discrimination based on their skin color is racism, and it’s a bad thing,” he says, “well, isn’t selecting people for rape because of their skin color also a bad thing? In fact, isn’t it a much worse thing?” What he neglects to mention is that it’s unclear how many, if any, of the black-on-white rapes were hate crimes — that is, motivated at least in part by racial bias. An offense isn’t a hate crime simply because the victim and perpetrator are of different races.

Moreover, Bodeker asserts that Latinos are deliberately taking away whites’ majority status. “If we object to the stated agenda of replacing whites as the racial majority in America with Hispanics, it’s us who get called the racists,” he says, “not the people who are openly and actively working to change the racial makeup of our country.”

Bodeker’s documentary has received most of its praise from hate publications and groups, including Vdare.com, The Occidental Quarterly, the National Policy Institute, American Renaissance and the Council of Conservative Citizens’ Citizens Informer. (One so-called mainstream fan of the film is the controversial black scholar Carol Swain, a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University and a member of the National Council for the Humanities. In a blurb posted on the documentary’s website, Swain calls the film “outstanding” and “meticulously done.” “[I]t offers people of all races a rare opportunity to engage in cross-racial dialogue,” she writes. “I highly recommend this film for social science courses dealing with race, class, and ethnicity.”)

The South Carolina Council of Conservative Citizens — a white supremacist group whose national conference Bodeker attended in June in Mississippi — recently hosted a big-screen showing of the movie in three locations. Since the documentary’s release last year, Bodeker has given interviews to the Romanian National Vanguard News Agency (motto: “International News for People of European Descent”), Mark Dankof (a radio broadcaster who also contributes to the anti-Semitic American Free Press), and The Political Cesspool, an overtly anti-Semitic, racist show whose guests have included former Klan boss David Duke, neo-Nazi April Gaede and Holocaust denier Mark Weber.

During these interviews, Bodeker manages to undermine his own argument, providing plenty of evidence that racism — the belief that one race is superior to another — really does exist.

On The Political Cesspool’s Jan. 31 show, for instance, one of the hosts asserts that “everything that is good about civilization — just about everything that is good, from literature to works of art to law is something that came from our [white people’s] minds.”

Bodeker’s response? “I have to agree.”

Here’s an ominous posting on YouTube from the “Patriot” crowd. It advises President Obama and other prominent people (“Our Dear Leader and co.”) to “leave now and give us our country back” and to do so by next week.

“If you stay,” the silent video message continues, “ ‘We, The People’ will systematically dismantle you, destroy you and reclaim what is rightfully ours. …

“We are angry and we are ready to take back the rights of the people. We will fight and We will win. …

“Dead line [sic] for your national response: October 15, 2009

“Thank you to all patriots who support our cause. … Be prepared for when the fateful day of the declaration of war is nationally announced.”

In August, The Southern Poverty Law Center issued a special report, “Return of the Militias,” documenting a resurgence of Patriot and extreme-right militia activity around the country.

The investigation, announced Monday, will be conducted by the Justice Department’s civil rights division and the local U.S. attorney’s office. It comes about nine months after the agencies began looking into a complaint that the Suffolk police force failed to adequately investigate crimes against Latinos and discouraged them from seeking assistance. The complaint was filed shortly after the November killing of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant fatally stabbed in the town of Patchogue in what authorities say was a hate crime.

“This is a civil, pattern or practice investigation that will seek to determine whether there are systemic violations of the Constitution or federal law by members of the SCPD,” Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar said in a statement announcing the investigation.

The investigation begins one month after the release of Southern Poverty Law Center’s Report, “Climate of Fear,” which examined in detail a years-long pattern of violence and abuse directed at Latino immigrants in Suffolk County, which occupies the eastern portion of Long Island.

The report showed that the Lucero murder, while the worst of the violence so far, was hardly an isolated incident, and that Latino immigrants were regularly harassed, taunted, and pelted with objects hurled from cars. Some reported being beaten with baseball bats and other objects. Adding to immigrants’ fears was the furious rhetoric of nativist groups such as the now-defunct Sachem Quality of Life, whose longtime spokesman regularly referred to immigrants as “terrorists.”

The report also found that among those fueling the anti-immigrant fire have been many of the very people who are charged with protecting the residents of Suffolk County — local politicians and law enforcement officials. One county legislator said that if he saw an influx of Latino day laborers in his town, “we’ll be out with baseball bats.” Another said that if Latino workers were to gather in a local neighborhood, “I would load my gun and start shooting, period.”

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer told The New York Times that he welcomed the federal investigation. It “gives us a chance to dispel the myths that we didn’t investigate thoroughly and completely any complaints that have come to our attention.”

Dormer acknowledged that his force may have missed a pattern of racially motivated crime against Latinos in the county in recent years but said that was because some crimes were apparently not reported to the police, the Times said.

The investigation was welcomed by LatinoJustice PRLDEF, the Manhattan-based national advocacy group that filed the initial complaint with the Justice Department last November. “Hopefully they can find out what’s gone wrong and determine why there seems to be a failure by police … and Latinos will be able to walk the streets again with confidence that the police are treating them fairly,” Foster Maer, a senior staff attorney for the organization, told Newsday.

Miyar, the Justice Department spokesman, told Newsday that investigations of this sort usually take 12 to 18 months. If the investigation finds wrongdoing, the police department could reach a settlement with the federal agency to change policies and practices or be forced to do so through a court-ordered consent decree. Over the past 10 years, Miyar said, the Justice Department has launched about two to three such investigations every year.

The SPLC report, titled “North Meets South,” also documented links between SVR founder and leader Thomas H. Naylor and other extremist organizations. Naylor has appeared on the hate radio program “The Political Cesspool,” which is run by white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens board member James Edwards. He is also an associate scholar at the Atlanta-based Abbeville Institute, which is run by former League of the South leader Donald Livingston and is devoted to the ignored “achievements of white people in the South.”

Naylor initially denounced the SPLC story, calling it “a vicious attack spearheaded by the well-financed, hate-mongering, witch-hunting, left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center.” He cited no factual errors. But a few weeks later, he had second thoughts. In a letter that appeared to signal an end to the alliance, he called on the League to distance itself from racism and hatred. In the July 4, 2008, letter, he wrote, “So long as the albatross of racism hangs around its neck, the LOS can never be a truly effective partner for SVR.” His own group, he said, “risks being tainted by the scourge of racism simply by associating with the LOS.” He provided a few helpful suggestions for the League: Renounce racism, recruit black members, bring in black speakers, and promote Southern racial unity. And one more thing: “the Confederate flag has got to go!”

The divorce didn’t last long, however. Naylor and a close ally, prominent New York leftist writer and editor Kirkpatrick Sale, are now scheduled to speak at a conference on secession being organized by the Abbeville Institute. They will share the stage at the Charleston, S.C., conference in February with neo-Confederate scholars such as Thomas DiLorenzo, Clyde Wilson and Livingston, the Abbeville Institute founder. All three have current or past links with the League of the South. (Go here for profiles of DiLorenzo, Livingston and Wilson.)

The title of the conference is “State Nullification, Secession and the Human Scale of Political Order.”

Reached by telephone at his home in Vermont, Naylor declined to discuss the state of his relations with the neo-Confederates. “This has nothing to do with race,” he said. “It’s the SPLC that’s the hate group. Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

Along with Patriots Coalition members, the month-long event, dubbed Operation Spike, is drawing volunteers from other Minuteman splinter factions such as Minuteman of One.

Patriots Coalition founder and president Al Garza identifies the group as part of the Tea Party tax protest movement. The Patriots Coalition website is loaded with “birther” conspiracy theory materials and jokes about assassinating President Obama.

The Sierra Vista Herald reported that on Saturday, Sept. 26, there were 45 participants stationed in just one of several Operation Spike ‘border watch’ sectors. All the sectors are within a 50-mile radius of Palominas, a Cochise County, Ariz., border town located just east of Coronado National Forest.

Garza estimated that 200 to 300 border watchers would take part in the operation, which began Sept. 19 and is scheduled to conclude Oct. 19, though Garza said he may extend it to the end of October, depending upon turnout and results.

Operation Spike participants told the Herald they’d reported groups of 15 and 17 individuals along the border, as well as a larger group of 65 individuals, some of them carrying backpacks, accompanied by four “ninja-dressed” men armed with AK-47s.

“We are seasoned and we know what to look for,” Garza told the Herald. “We know what to find. We know when we see something what to expect of it.”

A Border Patrol spokesman in Tucson served up the agency’s standard Minuteman disclaimer: “We don’t encourage people going out and actively looking because they are not trained as Border Patrol agents are trained. If something happens, they might put themselves in danger or they might endanger somebody else.”

Von Brunn, 89, is accused of shooting the guard, Stephen Johns, on June 10. He was previously held at the D.C. jail.

Read the SPLC’s report from the day of the shooting about von Brunn’s neo-Nazi ties.

Read the article from the latest Intelligence Report on von Brunn’s hunger for an audience for his virulent anti-Semitic screeds.

The adviser, professor of psychology Elliot Cramer, was responding to an E-mail alerting him that fliers bearing his photograph and home address had been distributed on campus. The fliers were captioned, “Why is your professor supporting white supremacy?” They urged students and faculty members to pressure Cramer to withdraw his support of Youth for Western Civilization, a national organization with direct ties to hate groups and white nationalist websites.

“Thanks for your concern,” Cramer replied in a Sept. 19 E-mail that he copied to Chancellor Holden Thorp. “I have a Colt .45, and I know how to use it. I used to be able to hit a quarter at 50 feet seven times out of ten.”

Thorp ordered Cramer to step down as the group’s faculty adviser the following day, effectively freezing the group’s activities. “This email is highly inappropriate,” the chancellor wrote to Cramer. “It is certainly not consistent with the civil discourse we are trying to promote.”

Cramer is the second YWC faculty adviser at UNC-CH to step down since the chapter formed early this year. In June, physics and astronomy professor Chris Clemens resigned, saying the group’s positions and rhetoric were too radical to promote constructive dialogue.

The UNC-CH chapter of YWC’s next scheduled event is a lecture by right-wing activist Bay Buchanan planned for October.

In April, anti-racist protesters forced the cancellation of an YWC-sponsored presentation by former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo on the UNC-CH campus. At other YWC-sponsored campus lectures this year, Tancredo staked out a nakedly white nationalist anti-immigration argument.

“Throughout history, people who are not white Anglo-Saxon have become American by adopting a white Anglo-Saxon culture,” Tancredo said in a February lecture at American University. “Today, this cult of multiculturality emphasizes our differences — things that pull us apart instead of bringing us together.” Tancredo further identified Latinos and Muslims as members of “problem” cultures.

The column was penned by Jeffrey T. Kuhner, who heads the Edmund Burke Institute, which is described by the paper as a “Washington-based think tank.” Taking a page out of the white nationalist playbook, Kuhner frets that the Obama administration plans a massive amnesty that will allow the “army of illegal immigrants” to wipe out America’s European “roots.”

Kuhner sees an America suffering from an immigrant “invasion,” a “bleeding sore” of a Southern border, “overwhelmed” hospitals and Mexican cartels running amok. He sees America’s jails filling up with these foreigners — “one-third of the federal prison population is composed of illegal immigrants”— a falsehood common among anti-immigrant propagandists (for how wrong Kuhner is, read here). He worries that our “uncontrolled immigration” is causing the “bonds of national union” to be “torn apart.”

What brought all this end times worrying on? Kuhner’s attendance at a radio talk show event put on last week in Washington by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which was listed as an anti-immigrant hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2007. FAIR has long peddled anti-immigrant conspiracies, including the idea that Mexicans cross the border not to work but to reconquer the Southwest.

Kuhner’s column also pushes the argument that America is not a “creedal nation,” meaning a nation based on the democratic ideas in our founding documents. Instead, it exists because it was peopled by European whites. This argument was best expressed by Sam Francis, the longtime editor for the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, who wrote that American and European civilizations could never have been created without the “genetic endowments” of whites (ironically, the now deceased Francis was once an editorial page editor at The Washington Times, but he was fired in 1995 for comments he made at a white supremacist conference).

Kuhner’s on board with Francis’s thesis: “America is an outgrowth of Christianity and English civilization.” For Kuhner, it is a historical fraud that America was founded on abstract ideas such as a “commitment to universal principles such as democracy and equality.” In fact, he points out that the Founding Fathers were blatantly anti-democratic and many were slaveholders. Kuhner cites John Adams: “Democracy…wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.” Instead, our founders were really “nationalists who believed they had established a distinct and unique nation based on a common language, faith, heritage and culture.”

Besides his democracy and immigrant-bashing, Kuhner engages in a particularly nasty attack on the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), a venerable Hispanic civil rights organization. Kuhner falsely claims NCLR calls for “the annexation of the Southwest back into Mexico” and wants to reacquire former Mexican territories.

Had Kuhner bothered to check, he would have found that NCLR clearly condemns ethnic separatist organizations. The group even has repeatedly disavowed certain founding documents of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanos de Aztlan (MEChA), a fellow Latino rights organization that is not a racist separatist group but did, more than 40 years ago, publish what NCLR characterizes as “inappropriate rhetoric.” In addition, NCLR publicly condemns Voz de Aztlan, a virulently anti-Semitic and separatist outfit that has long been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Kuhner also slurs Obama, calling him an “international socialist” intent on “sounding the death knell of traditional America.” Perhaps in the future, Kuhner could set aside his tirades in favor of the facts.

Pendergraft’s verdict: “I found the article very amusing.”

She didn’t intend it as a compliment. Pendergraft, 18, and sister Shelby, 16, singing as Heritage Connection, have released two CDs and perform at white nationalist events. Among other things, Charity Pendergraft took umbrage at our description of the sisters’ “thin, quavering voices.” “[T]hose who have heard us sing live would agree that our music, lyrics and vocals are anything but ‘quavering,’” she wrote on the sisters’ blog.

She also didn’t like the way we poked fun at her fondness for Mexican cuisine. (Charity had written in an earlier blog post that she’d eaten enchiladas for dinner and loved “Spanish” food.) “Doesn’t she [the author] know the difference between Mexican food and Spanish food?” she sniffed. “Or for that matter the difference between Mexicans and Spaniards? First Spaniards are white and second Mexicans are a mix of indian, white, and negro. I believe she needs to do more research. True native food in Mexico was a mixture of roasted and/or boiled lizard, rat, and boiled root vegetables. No, I’m not trying to be mean, just telling the truth. It took the creativity of the white Spaniards to make the food of ‘Mexico’ edible.”

We took Pendergraft up on her suggestion that we do more research and contacted Jeffrey Pilcher, a history professor at the University of Minnesota and the author of ¡Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity. Here (in part) is what he had to say about the origin of enchiladas:

“The claim that anything valuable in Mexican culture must have been introduced by the Spaniards is an old and pernicious myth. In this case, it’s presumably a reference to the cheese on top. But the word ‘enchilada’ means something that has been put in chile, and that something is of course a corn tortilla. Needless to say, both chile and tortillas were eaten for at least a thousand years before the Spaniards arrived. The Florentine Codex written in the sixteenth century by indigenous scribes under the direction of Fray Bernardino de Sahagu’n describes ancient Aztec enchiladas. The Mayas still eat an entirely pre-Hispanic dish called Papadzules, meaning ‘food of the lords,’ which is an enchilada made with two different sauces, one of pumpkin seeds and the other with tomato and habanero chiles. Instead of cheese, it is garnished with boiled and chopped turkey eggs. Delicious.”

Some 1,300 local, state and federal law enforcement officials were involved in the pre-dawn sweep on Tuesday that followed a year-long investigation and led to the arrest of more than 45 people connected to the Avenues gang. A far-reaching federal indictment named 88 members or associates of the Avenues who were wanted on charges that included murder, attempted murder, drug dealing, witness intimidation and money laundering.

The Avenues is a largely Hispanic gang controlled by the Mexican Mafia from within the California state prison system. The 222-page indictment unsealed Tuesday describes how the group tries to terrorize blacks who venture into its territory in Northeast Los Angeles. “Neighborhoods controlled by the Avenues gang are frequently ‘tagged’ with racist threats directed against African-Americans that are intended to intimidate African-Americans and prevent African-Americans from living in the neighborhood,” it said. “Avenues gang members also confront African-Americans with threats of violence and murder in order to intimidate and prevent African-Americans from residing in or entering the neighborhoods controlled by the Avenues gang.”

The indictment also noted several specific incidents of violence and intimidation directed at blacks. In a Sept. 5, 2000, incident, gang members including Sam Vega (also known as “Fox”) pulled a gun on a black man and said, “This is Avenues gang, what’s up nigger?” On March 8, 2005, gang members including Freddy Bailon (also known as “Thief”) attacked one victim and stabbed another in their home, “while shouting racial epithets and ordering them to move out of the neighborhood controlled by the Avenues gang,” according to the indictment. And on Feb. 21, 2009, while using a hidden telephone from his prison cell, gang member Richie Aguirre (also known as “Lil Pee Wee”) ordered his daughter not to associate with blacks.

An article published in 2006 in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report documented how the Avenues and other Hispanic street gangs in Los Angeles were waging campaigns of terror against blacks. After the racially-motivated murders of two black men, for instance, four Avenues gang members were convicted in 2005 of violating federal hate crime laws and sentenced to life in prison. This spring, 147 members and associates of another racist street gang in the Los Angeles suburbs, Varrio Hawaiian Gardens, were indicted on racketeering charges, including murder, attempted murder and kidnapping. The indictment alleged that gang members “have expressed a desire to rid the city of Hawaiian Gardens of all African-Americans and have engaged in a systematic effort to achieve that result by perpetrating crimes against African-Americans.”