In recent weeks, a Microsoft cell phone app that helps people use GPS to avoid high-crime areas has prompted a nationwide discussion about race, class and prejudice.

Some praise the “avoid the ghetto app,” as the product has been unofficially dubbed, as a handy safety measure. Others worry it will reinforce false assumptions about race and violent crime. “In much of dominant American culture, there’s an assumption that criminality and being poor and not white go hand in hand,” Sarah Chinn, author of Technology and the Logic of American Racism, told National Public Radio on Jan. 25. ( continue to full post… )

Anti-liberal propaganda has been ramping up for years. Former Fox News host Glenn Beck, who was cited as an inspiration for at least three rightwing extremists accused of committing or plotting violence, called himself a “progressive hunter” and attempted to rebrand Hitler as a leftist. Anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney routinely warns of a “red-green” alliance between liberals and violent Islamist terrorists.  But the people behind a website called “Target of Opportunity” (motto: “Eliminating the planet of liberals one at a time”) have taken things several steps further, creating a “Hit List” profiling supposed liberal enemies of America.

“This website is a list and record of people that betray and endanger America by their Seditious, Treasonous, and/or Terrorist activities,” its homepage reads. “Operating under the false illusion of Peaceful and Non-Violent activism, their methods are anything but Peaceful and Non-Violent. These people present a serious threat to all Americans. Each and every one of them should be considered a “TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY.” ( continue to full post… )

Today at noon, a group of the nastiest gay-bashers in America plans to hold a press conference in front of the Montgomery, Ala., offices of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which publishes this blog. Claiming that the SPLC is engaged in a “campaign to demonize adherents of traditional Judeo-Christian morality,” the white organizers of the press conference are bringing along a set of black pastors in a presumed bid to embarrass the SPLC, a 40-year-old anti-racist civil rights organization.

The irony is that SPLC has named five of the participating organizations as hate groups precisely because they demonize LGBT people, using a series of well-worn lies to paint gays and lesbians as perverts, pedophiles and worse. Despite the claims of the groups, the SPLC is not attacking anyone’s morality. Instead, our hate group listings reflect the fact that they regularly propagate known falsehoods. ( continue to full post… )

Youth for Western Civilization, an ultraconservative student group sworn to protect the West from the perils of multiculturalism, has issued a report claiming the South African government is responsible for “orchestrat[ing] the systematic slaughter of the white community.”

“The worst fears of the so called ‘radicals’ of the white minority that were discounted in the early 1990s now have come true,” YWC member Matthew Heimbach wrote Monday. “What resulted in South Africa under the communist backed African National Congress instead of a multicultural paradise has become a land in which white citizens have been placed under animalistic attacks.”

What Heimbach is referring to, in no uncertain terms, is the end of apartheid – an event celebrated around the world. But his analysis of history goes on to describe the African National Congress, a political party whose members have included Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela, as nothing shy of a “terrorist group” intent on a scorched earth policy of white genocide. ( continue to full post… )

Pam Geller, the Muslim-hating propagandist behind the Atlas Shrugs website, is at it again. Even as U.S. officials recoil in horror, the woman whose blog once suggested that President Obama is the “love child” of Malcolm X is celebrating a video that appears to show U.S. soldiers urinating on dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

“CAIR has whipped itself up into an Islamic frenzy because a video surfaced that appears to show US Marines [in] combat gear urinating on several dead jihadis,” Geller’s website said Wednesday, referring to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group. “Would anyone have CAIRed if Marines urinated on dead Nazi soldiers during WWII? (Anyone besides CAIR and Nazis, that is)?” ( continue to full post… )

Now that he has a whole lot of time on his hands, self-described prophet Warren Jeffs is claiming to be the “mouthpiece” of an angry God. And judging from the sound of things, there’s going to hell to pay for daring to lock up the racist cult leader for raping a 12-year-old “celestial” child bride and other crimes.

In a series of eight biblically themed “revelations,” written between Aug. 18 and Nov. 12, Jeffs predicts widespread catastrophe and divine vengeance for a nation “fully ripening in iniquity.” Earthquakes will rock Arizona, tidal waves will smack Seattle, “melting fire” will roll across Idaho, and devastating storms will wreak havoc everywhere else, the convicted sex criminal predicts. ( continue to full post… )

The Rev. Donald Spitz has a message for gay-friendly churches, and the murder-endorsing anti-abortion crusader is not mincing words.

In E-mails sent in recent days to an unknown number of churches listed on GayChurch.org, he wrote: “To accept sexual deviancy as normal is a sin. You put your soul in danger of eternal damnation for welcoming unrepentant homosexuals into God’s house. You blaspheme the Name of God. Homosexuality should be criminalized. Homosexuals commit crimes against God, against nature, against the Holy Bible and against the human race. ( continue to full post… )

Dear David Duke,

In light of your recent travel adventures in Europe and your subsequent Open Letter to the World to set the record straight on your “basic principles and beliefs,” we thought it might be an opportune moment to remind you what those principles actually are. In all your efforts to whitewash (a phrase you’ll enjoy, we know) the record, we fear you may have forgotten, like certain political candidates, what it is you really stand for. ( continue to full post… )

Be careful what you wish for.

Media-hungry Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who just last week complained about a supposed “black out” on news of his investigation into the validity of President Obama’s birth certificate, is finally getting the media coverage he deserves. ( continue to full post… )

It isn’t exactly the midnight ride of Paul Revere, but clearly something is up.

Since September, the John Birch Society has sponsored or co-sponsored lectures on the dangers of Agenda 21 in Manahawkin, Somers Point, Williamstown, Pompton Plains, and Toms River, N.J.; in Bozeman, Great Falls, Kalispell, and Missoula, Mont.; in Indianapolis, Ind.; in Albany and Queens, N.Y.; in Deland, Jacksonville and Gainesville, Fla.; in Mobile, Ala.; and in Shelton and Westport, Conn.

( continue to full post… )