The man accused of planting a “weapon of mass destruction” on the parade route of a Martin Luther King Jr. unity parade in Spokane, Wash., last January is expected to plead guilty today in U.S. District Court.

Kevin William Harpham, a 36-year-old with past ties to the neo-Nazi National Alliance and the online Vanguard News Network, is expected to plead to charges that will earn him a lengthy federal prison sentence instead of life in prison.

A change of plea hearing for Harpham, a former Army ordinance specialist and unemployed electrician, was filed in court Tuesday after his public defenders and Justice Department prosecutors spent the Labor Day weekend hammering out a plea deal, it was learned late Tuesday. ( continue to full post… )

Was it road rage or self defense? Or maybe even a politically motivated act of violence?

That’s what a jury will decide when the trial of Jewish Defense League organizer Carl Mintz begins on Oct. 14.

Mintz, 27, a state chapter organizer for the JDL in Michigan, is charged in the shooting of a 20-year-old Arab-American named Faith Said. The prosecution’s first attempt at a conviction ended with a mistrial in August when three members of the jury refused to acquit Mintz.

According to local police reports, Said approached Mintz’s car after the two came to rest at a stoplight in Farmington Hills, Mich. Said got out of his car and walked toward Mintz, loudly criticizing him for tapping his brakes as he approached the light. Mintz then reached for his concealed handgun and shot Said in the arm. Mintz is claiming self-defense, but prosecutors note that the light had already turned green when Mintz opened fire and that he could have simply driven away.

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Does an ardent Jewish neo-conservative ever agree with an anti-Semite who despises neo-conservatives?

We didn’t think so, until the Miss USA contest showed that Muslim-bashing author Daniel Pipes and racist radio host James Edwards do indeed share some common ground. The men suggested on their respective blogs that 24-year-old Rima Fakih of Dearborn, Mich., captured the pageant crown on Sunday because of her Muslim religion (Pipes) or her Arab ethnicity (Edwards).

Edwards, the “Political Cesspool” host who has claimed that white women are physically superior, griped that he wasn’t surprised by Fakih’s win. “It’s pretty much a federal law now that beauty pageant winners have to be non-white,” he wrote in his Monday blog post, “and now that Arabs are the latest ‘oppressed minority,’ they’re finally getting their place at the top of the quota totem pole.”

Meanwhile, Pipes — whose resume includes posts at elite universities, a stint at the State Department, and a presidential appointment to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace — made a remarkably similar point. In an article titled “Affirmative Action in Beauty Contests?” posted on his website Sunday, Pipes posted the names (and photos) of six Muslim women who had won pageants in America and Europe over the past five years.

“They are all attractive,” he conceded, “but this surprising frequency of Muslims winning beauty pageants makes me suspect an odd form of affirmative action. My suspicion is borne out by the selection of Anisah Rasheed as Miss A&T at North Carolina Agriculture and Technical State University.” Pipes went on to quote from an article about Rasheed’s coronation that described her tiara sitting atop her hijab, the headscarf traditionally worn by Muslim women. (None of the other Muslim contest winners in Pipes’ article were pictured wearing the hijab.)

In an update posted Monday on his website, Pipes shared three non-critical responses from readers who wrote to him about the article. They included the following item, which Pipes presented without comment: “No surprise here. Affirmative action was first applied in beauty contests for black women to win in the 1980s, then it was the turn of Latin, brown skinned women, and now it’s Muslims. That’s why most people ignore these rigged ‘events.’ They are money losers and require controversy.” ( continue to full post… )