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Xenophobic Arizona Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, has raised a lot of eyebrows. Besides his very public hatred of Hispanics, he's also established ties with a Neo-Nazi group in his home state. Arpaio's obliteration of civil rights has finally caught up with him and the Obama Administration is finally pushing back:

A controversial Arizona sheriff known for taking a hard line against illegal immigrants has been stripped of some of his powers in what he described as a political move by the Obama administration.

Under a two-year-old agreement with the federal department of homeland security, Arpaio and his deputies had been authorised to enforce federal immigration law by arresting suspected illegal immigrants in the field and by checking the immigration status of people arrested on other offences.

But after drawing thousands of complaints and a civil rights investigation from the justice department, Arpaio was this week stripped of his federal authority to make immigration arrests. County attorney Andrew Thomas, one of Arpaio's supporters, condemned the "setback in the fight against illegal immigration". Read on...

This is a positive sign and I applaud the White House for taking making this happen. It's long overdue.

I'm guessing that someone explained to him that it would be in his interests to change his tune. After all, he wants his new security business to keep making money, right?

WASHINGTON — Former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge, speaking for the first time about accusations made in his new book, says he did not mean to suggest that other top Bush administration officials were playing politics with the nation's security before the 2004 presidential election.

"I'm not second-guessing my colleagues," Ridge said in an interview about The Test of Our Times, which comes out Tuesday and recounts his experiences as head of the nation's homeland security efforts in the first several years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In the book, Ridge portrays his fledgling department as playing second fiddle to other Cabinet-level heavyweights. As secretary, he says he was never invited to participate in National Security Council meetings, he was left out of the information loop by the FBI and his proposal to establish Homeland Security offices in major cities such as New Orleans were rejected.

His most explosive accusation: that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft pressed him to raise the national threat level after Osama bin Laden released a videotape criticizing President Bush shortly before Election Day 2004. Ridge writes he rejected raising the level because bin Laden had released nearly 20 such tapes since 9/11 and the latest contained nothing suggesting an imminent threat.

Noting that Bush's approval ratings typically went up when the threat level was raised, Ridge writes that Ashcroft and Rumsfeld pushed to elevate it during a "vigorous" discussion.

"Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level, and was supported by Rumsfeld," he writes. "There was absolutely no support for that position within our department. None. I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?' "

Although he prevailed and the threat level was not elevated, Ridge writes that the episode reinforced his decision to resign. He did so weeks after the election.

Last week, when word got out about Ridge's accusations, Rumsfeld's spokesman Keith Urbahn issued a statement calling them "nonsense."

Now, Ridge says he did not mean to suggest he was pressured to raise the threat level, and he is not accusing anyone of trying to boost Bush in the polls. "I was never pressured," Ridge said.

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While discussing the latest revelations from Tom Ridge's new book that the Homeland Security terrorist threat alerts were used for political purposes, Bill Kristol defends what happened just before the election where they decided it would be too obvious if they raised it again and uses that one example to claim that the program was not used for political purposes. Fox just loves them some little neo-con serial liars, don't they? Bill, just because they finally decided they over played their hand doesn't mean they weren't playing politics with the fear card.

Newshounds has the breakdown of just how the alerts were used in the run up to the election. Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid:

2001
Oct 11: The FBI warned of imminent terrorist attacks in the US "in the next several days". Of course there was no indication of when or where these attacks would occur. There were no attacks.

Oct 29: The Administration warned of plans to strike the US "in the next week." No specifics such as dates or targets were given. There were no attacks.

Dec 3: Ridge warns that terrorist strikes "could happen within the next few weeks," possibly connected with the Muslim religious festival of Ramadan. There were no attacks.

2002
Jan 17: Ashcroft warns that suicide attacks "might be expected because of confidential information" the US government had received. No dates or places were given. Nothing more was ever heard about the "confidential information." There were no attacks.

Feb 10: The FBI warned there was a threat of "imminent attacks on the US that might happen as early as Feb 12." There were no attacks.

Mar 27: The government issued a warning that American citizens in 4 Italian cities "would be attacked on Easter Sunday." There were no attacks.

May 19: VP Cheney states that he is "certain of new attacks against the US". There were no attacks.

May 21: The FBI warned of imminent threat of� "attacks against the Brooklyn Bridge & the Statue of Liberty". There were no attacks.

Sep 10: The government raised the National Alert Level to orange stating that there would be "strikes against American sites on the anniversary of the Sept 11 attack". Air patrols were instituted & access to government buildings was prohibited. There were no attacks.

2003
Feb 8: Ridge & Ashcroft announced a high National Terror Alert, claiming they had "evidence that terrorists would attack American hotels & apartment buildings." There were no attacks.

Mar 17. National Alert Level raised to orange. No reasons are given. There were no attacks.

Mar 18. The Arizona National Guard was alerted & sent to a nuclear plant because "an attack by al Qaeda agents was imminent". There was no attack.

Dec 21: Ridge raised alert levels & warned that the" threat of imminent attack is now the most serious since 2001". There was no attack.

2004
Apr 2: The Administration warns about "pending terrorist attacks on buses & trains". There were no attacks.

May 26. Ashcroft & Mueller warn of a "plane attack inside the US" & that terrorists "were poised for an immediate attack". There was no attack.

Aug 1: Ridge raised the alert level to orange, claiming knowledge of plots against US financial institutions. It was later discovered that his "knowledge" was 4 years old & very unspecific. There was no attack.

And then of course we have Keith's reporting which at the time I'm surprised didn't get him kicked off of the air at MSNBC on the Nexus of Politics and Fear, which he just updated and my friend and fellow contributor here at Video Cafe CSPANJunkie just posted for me this week.

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h/t C&L'er Mugsy

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Conservatives have been working like mad to whitewash out of public view the existence of violent right-wing extremists, only to run into one problem: They keep popping back up again, time after time. Darned reality intrudes again.

So when the Southern Poverty Law Center recently confirmed what we've been reporting at C&L for awhile now -- that the far-right "militia" movement of the 1990s was roaring back to life -- it really wasn't a big surprise when Fox ran a story quoting a bunch of various right-wing officials dismissing it:

"I think it's utter nonsense to say it's racial," said Carter Clews, spokesman at Americans for Limited Government. Clews said Obama's "doctrinaire socialistic approach to government" has triggered a populist backlash, but "it's inappropriate to use the word militia."

The SPLC report came just four months after the Department of Homeland Security issued a controversial report on "right-wing extremists." That assessment carried many of the same themes and warnings as the new "militia" report, also warning that the election of the first black president could be exploited as a recruiting tool.

According to data ALG obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the DHS relied in large part on news articles, questionable Web sites and several already-public SPLC reports -- not official government sources -- in writing its "right-wing extremists" report.

William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, said the latest SPLC report suggests that DHS and the law center are relying largely on the same pool of information to make their claims about the rise in right-wing extremism.

"They are attempting to brand all right-of-center protesters as potential domestic terrorists or extremists," he said. "They are painting whole swaths of people as hate groups and extremists."

This is, of course, pure bunk of a sort: The report specifies that the key to considering someone under the influence of the Patriot movement is their willing adoption of the various conspiracy theories and provably false "facts" that form the bedrock of the movement's belief systems. Things like, for instance, believing Obama is actually a non-citizen born in Kenya.

So to the extent that the SPLC is branding "whole swaths" of people, that's only true as far as these kinds of far-right beliefs spread. Unfortunately, as we've seen with the adoption of "birther" beliefs by nearly half of all Republicans, that now includes a much broader swath of society than we'd heretofore suspected.

But that is not the SPLC's fault. Rather, all that point raises is serious questions about the direction that movement conservatism is now taking.

After all, all those Obama-hating crazies are not coming out of the woodwork in a vacuum.

Earlier this week, Keith Olbermann explored this in depth with the SPLC's Mark Potok. It's an enlightening discussion.

Tom Ridge wants to have it both ways. He sat on his hands then to save his job and now he wants to get paid again. Remember, he could have made a difference. Now he describes the terror alerts he propagated as "political" when he has a book to sell, but it's not sitting well with a lot of us, especially when he already knew that in 2004.

First, the timing of terror alerts raises questions that aren’t adequately answered.

If there’s no intent to benefit the president in a re-election year, Ridge should say more than “we don’t play politics” at the Department of Homeland Security.

Especially after doing a virtual campaign ad by announcing “new” threats just after the Democratic convention and praising “the president’s leadership in the war against terror.”

And it wasn’t said off the cuff or in answer to a question. It was said in prepared remarks.

It makes Ridge more salesman than guardian, more political servant than public servant.

Same with failing to divulge the full context of information on potential terror sites later revealed as three to four years old.

How does pushing the president while holding back the truth give anyone confidence “we don’t play politics”?

Maybe he’s told what to say, when and how, and maybe that’s why he wants out. A source close to Ridge tells me the relationship between Ridge and the White House “isn’t what it used to be.” Still, it’s his gig.

In his new book, former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge confirms what most long suspected: the Bush administration manipulated the terror threat level for the President's political advantage. But while his long overdue admission is welcome, his suggestion that he resigned over the matter is laughable.

As ThinkProgress and others have passed along, US News reported that:

Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

Just days before the 2004 election, Ridge claimed to wonder "Is this about security or politics?" when Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft wanted to raise the threat level in response to the newly released Osama Bin laden videotape. But Ridge's own statements that summer hurt his portrayal of himself as an innocent bystander steamrolled by the Bush propaganda machine.

When the New York Times called into question the dated and dubious intelligence behind a new terror warning on August 3, 2004, Secretary Ridge famously responded:

"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security."

Sadly for Ridge, that pathetic defense followed his cheerleading for President Bush just two days earlier:

"We must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror."

Ridge's resignation was announced on November 30, 2004, only after George W. Bush had been safely reelected. Upon leaving, Ridge announced, "The president has given me an extraordinary opportunity to serve my country in this incredible period since September 11th, 2001." And as the New York Times Eric Lichtblau later wrote in his book Bush's Law, Tom Ridge offered to take a lie detector test to prove no manipulation of terror alters had occurred on his watch:

“Wire me up. Not a chance. Politics played no part.”

And so it goes. On September 1st, you can read Tom Ridge's apparent revisionist history for yourself. In the meantime, here's a look back at the Conservative Threat Level.

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It looks like Tom Ridge's lastest revelations in his book have given Keith a chance to say he was correct when he did his series on the Nexus of Politics and Terror. John Dean weighs in on the criminality of what Ridge has admitted to in his book. He thinks Ridge gave himself some wiggle room since he said he only believed the terrorist threat level was being manipulated for political reasons, and did not say he knew it to be a fact.

It's so nice to see all the dirty f@%#king hippies were right about this, huh? It will be interesting to watch the Villagers try to explain why they didn't report on something as plain as the noses on their faces back when this was going on. Other than Keith, I don't recall any of them speaking out about it other than to repeat the government propaganda. I'd also like someone to ask Tom Ridge why he didn't resign when he first knew this was happening.

We don't really know. But the draft of a GAO risk assessment says the decision was based on "unrepresentative accident scenarios," "outdated modeling" and "inadequate" information about the sites. Gee, I'm not feeling real good about that:

The Department of Homeland Security relied on a rushed, flawed study to justify its decision to locate a $700 million research facility for highly infectious pathogens in a tornado-prone section of Kansas, according to a government report.

The department's analysis was not "scientifically defensible" in concluding that it could safely handle dangerous animal diseases in Kansas -- or any other location on the U.S. mainland, according to a Government Accountability Office draft report obtained by The Washington Post. The GAO said DHS greatly underestimated the chance of accidental release and major contamination from such research, which has been conducted only on a remote island off the United States.

DHS staff members tried quietly last week to fend off a public airing of the facility's risks, agency correspondence shows. Department officials met privately with staff members of a congressional oversight subcommittee to try to convince them that the GAO report was unfair, and to urge them to forgo or postpone a hearing. But the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight and investigations subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), decided otherwise. It plans to hold a hearing Thursday on the risk analysis, according to two sources briefed on the plans.

The criticism of DHS's site selection comes as the proposed research lab, the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), was expected to win construction funding in the congressional appropriations process.

"Drawing conclusions about relocating research with highly infectious exotic animal pathogens from questionable methodology could result in regrettable consequences," the GAO warned in its draft report. DHS's review was too "limited" and "inadequate" to decide that any mainland labs were safe, the report found. GAO officials declined to comment on the findings.

The new developments started another round of accusations that politics steered DHS's decision in January to build the proposed lab in Manhattan, Kan. Critics of the choice argue that a Kansas contingent of Republican Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts and then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, aggressively lobbied DHS to pick their state. Records show that a DHS undersecretary and his site selection committee met frequently with the senators, one of whom is a member of an appropriations subcommittee that helps set DHS funding.