I must say that I was truly honored--humbled if you will--to have the former demi-term Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, contact me and ask me to write her speech for today's family-friendly event--the NRA annual convention in Charlotte, North Carolina [it must be all the nice things I've said about her. She even agreed to allow me to share with you an early copy. So here you go:

Palin Speech

Thanks you! Thank you!! I am proud to be here today in the Palmetto State! And I'm so honored to be speaking to you, the real Americans who make up the Natural Rifle Association!

There are some scary things going on here out there in this country of ours. The liberal elites, you know, and their allies in the lamestream media, they'll tell you that guns are dangerous. Ya know, its guns, and not their liberal ideas, like preparation of church and state, abortion and laws against drunk snowmobiling that've really caused inrest in our streets.

Well, I'm here to tell you they're wrong. Guns don't kill people. People kill guns. So I am so proud to be delivering this massage in front of an organization that predicted what the liberals would try and do, an organization that had the foreskin to warn us about how they'd destroy our great country.[wink]

Now I am not going to take too much of your time, because I have two more events tonight that will each pay me a cool 100K for winking and offering folksy platitudes about things I don't really understand--but let me single out a few examples of what I'm talkin 'bout.

Lately there have been attempts to take guns away from those the big government liberals call "suspected terrorists." That's right. Some of them have even called the NRA terrorists, which makes no sense--most NRA members are white!

The liberal elites whine about a "terrorist gap," which allowed the shootings to occur at Fort Hood, Fort Dix and allowed the Times Square attempted bomber to get a gun. They think that good Americans shotgunning beers at bars in Georgia and Virginia shouldnt be allowed to carry assault weapons, they empathize with polls that make it clear that a majority of Americans don't want TEC-9s in their faces when they drink their lattes at Starbucks, even though we all know that numbers are Communist. I mean listen to these liberal lies:

A majority of Americans oppose people carrying loaded guns openly in public. More feel unsafe than feel safer - and a third feel much less safe with that knowledge, according to a poll conducted for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence by respected polling firm Lake Research Partners.

The last thing I'll say on this is that, I mean seriously folks, how could an event where Oliver North is speaking after me be held by a group that supports arming terrorists? [wink, extend leg so calf is fully visible]

Then there's the oil-hating left. I mean, while we hear all this jibber-jabbering about the Gulf of Texaco spill, I'd like to ask, has anyone in the Obama Administration even tried threatening the oil with an ole six-shooter yet? Didn't think so.

I mean c'mon folks, it's not like our addiction to oil is endangering our national security, economy, health or environment here. Sure, I know former Vice President Al Gore pointed this out:

[...both the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the CO2 spill into the global atmosphere are causing profound and harmful changes--directly and indirectly. The oil is having a direct impact on fish, shellfish, turtles, seabirds, coral reefs, marshes, and the entire web of life in the Gulf Coast. The indirect effects include the loss of jobs in the fishing and tourism industries; the destruction of the health, vitality, and rich culture of communities in the region; imminent bankruptcies; vast environmental damage expected to persist for decades; and the disruption of seafood markets nationwide.

And, of course, the consequences of our ravenous consumption of oil are even larger. Starting 40 years ago, when America's domestic oil production peaked, our dependence on foreign oil has steadily grown. We are now draining our economy of several hundred billion dollars a year in order to purchase foreign oil in a global market dominated by the huge reserves owned by sovereign states in the Persian Gulf. This enormous and increasing transfer of wealth contributes heavily to our trade and current-account deficits, and enriches regimes in the most unstable region of the world, helping to finance both terrorism and Iran's relentless effort to build a nuclear arsenal.

The profound risk to our national and economic security posed by the prospect of the world's sudden loss of access to Persian Gulf oil contributed greatly to the strategic miscalculations and public deceptions that led to our costly invasion of Iraq, including the reckless diversion of military and intelligence assets from Afghanistan before our mission there was accomplished.

I am far from the only one who believes that it is not too much of a stretch to link the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and northwestern Pakistan--and even last week's attempted bombing in Times Square--to a long chain of events triggered in part by our decision to allow ourselves to become so dependent on foreign oil.]

But you know how I know that the liberals are wrong on this once again? Because I saw where they said that pollution could even lead to cases of angina. And I may just be a humble woman from Wasilla, but I know the environment has nothing to do with a woman's lady parts.

OK, I am about half-way done with my speech. Which means I'm finished. As Rush Limbaugh would say satirically, you know, see ya later retards. [wash notes off hand; put new ones on; leave]

*Not following Cliff Schecter on Twitter could likely lead to the 7th sign of the apocalypse

**Full Disclosure: Cliff Schecter consults on issues surrounding gun safety and protecting the environment.

In another example about how Republicans cannot be trusted to responsibly address national security (or domestic security) issues, Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Lieberman (R-at Heart) are threatening the Defense Department with subpoenas if it does not release documents that they requested through the Senate's homeland security committee.

"The painful fact is that 13 Americans died in the Fort Hood massacre," Lieberman said. "We owe it to them and their survivors and everyone else in our country to determine whether our government could have prevented their deaths -- and if so, why it did not -- so that we can make sure it does the next time."

Collins faulted administration aides for "an inexplicable determination to stalemate and slow-walk our investigation."

Appropriately, SecDef Bob Gates has told the two to go pound sand, since there are, in fact, a few other pressing defense issues on his agenda, and there is no story here.

Gates, speaking to reporters after attending a Caribbean security conference in Barbados, said the US government had no interest in hiding information from Congress but the legal case against Major Nidal Malik Hasan had to take priority.

“Anything that does not have any impact on that prosecution, we are more than willing to share,” Gates said. “But what’s most important is this prosecution. And we will co-operate with the committee in every way - with that single caveat, that whatever we provide doesn’t compromise the prosecution.”

Of all the possible homeland security or military issues that one could address, keeping the Major Hassan story alive shouldn't be the top priority of this Senate's committee. Why these two want to keep this non-story alive is beyond me. Neither is up for re-election prior to 2012 - that's a long way off - so the only other explanation (because I don't buy the idea of misplaced concerns about DOD or DoJ practices and policies) is to embarrass the Obama administration at the cost of screwing the government officials who are correctly addressing the situation right now.

WTF?:

Congressman Gresham Barrett (R-SC) has announced his intention to reintroduce legislation that would prohibit “the admission of aliens from countries designated as State Sponsors of Terrorism as well as Yemen to the United States.” The Stop Terrorist Entry Program (STEP) Act, first introduced in 2003, also would have required all persons from these countries on student visas, temporary work visas, exchange and tourist visas to leave the United States within 60 days, despite their legal status in the country. Residents and nationals of Iran, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen would be affected.

The bill makes an exception only in the cases of individuals who are seeking political or religious asylum, or who have immediate emergency medical needs.

Congressman Barrett said his bill came in response to the Fort Hood shooting and the Christmas-day attempt to blow up an airplane over Detroit. “While President Obama may have declared an end to the War on Terror, it is clear our enemies did not get the message. Twice in the past two months, radical Islamic terrorists have attacked our nation and the Administration has failed to adapt its national security and immigration policies to counter the renewed resolve of those who seek to harm our citizens.”

The American Army major and Nigerian alleged to have committed those attacks would not have been affected by the STEP Act.

I swear, Republicans cannot think their way out of a paper bag. This would have done NOTHING to prevent the two attacks in the last year. In fact, I would hazard a guess that it might actually radicalize even MORE Muslims with its naked bigotry.

And while we're at it, let's examine that list of targeted countries. Remind me again, how many terror attacks have originated from Cuba? Iran? And why isn't Saudi Arabia on that list?

The National Iranian-American Council has launched a campaign against Barrett's actions. It states:

If passed, the bill would deport all Iranians on student visas, temporary work visas, exchange visas, and tourist visas from the United States within 60 days. It would also make it illegal for Iranians to travel to the United States, though some exceptions may be made for medical emergencies and political or religious asylum after "extensive federal screening." [..]

At a time of increasing repression in Iran, this proposal will impose even greater burdens on Iranians seeking refuge abroad. Iranian Americans must unite to tell Congressman Barrett that this legislation is offensive to American principles, harmful to US interests and discriminates against Iranians and Iranian Americans.

I can't possibly emphasize enough what a tenuous place Iranians find themselves right now. I've spoken to many Iranian friends who feel strongly that the government is in a state of flux and could quite possibly radically change (and secularize). This is not the time to play cowboy and give the Iranians a reason to rally around us as an enemy.

But of course, when has facts and reality ever actually played into the kabuki theatre of partisan politics?

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Bill O'Reilly devoted his leadoff Talking Points Memo segment and the following conversation with Dick "The Troll Who Lives Under the Bridge" Morris to the notion that, if another terrorist attack occurs on President Obama's watch, he's gonna be all washed up.

Nevermind that, of course, no one has yet died from a terrorist attack on Obama's watch. (O'Reilly's counting the Fort Hood shootings as a "terrorist attack," though of course there isn't much evidence that it actually was.)

Still, you have to wonder where O'Reilly and Morris and all these other right-wing blame-meisters were back in 2001 and 2002, in the wake of an actual terrorist event that actually killed 3,000 people.

Oh, that's right -- they were busy proclaiming that any blame-laying against Bush was beyond the realm of acceptable discourse. If you suggested back then that Bush had been asleep at the wheel on terrorism on 9/11, you were accused of being a traitor who hated America.

Oh, and let's just remember exactly what George W. Bush's record on terrorism was:

Afterward, of course, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told the press: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." (As a matter of fact, just such a scenario had been foreseen by intelligence officials in 1998, as Rice later admitted.)

Then there was the Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US," which concluded:

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Violence is contagious.

This Kentucky weirdo should be checked out very carefully.

A Kentucky woman has threatened a Michigan newspaper with a bloodbath similar to the massacre at Ft. Hood if they don't lay off criticism of the District 6 congresswoman.

Weird. We always thought Michele was a pro-life kinda gal. But on with the story, which begins with an editorial in the Port Huron Times Herald. It lambastes Bachmann as a "a hate-spewing, right-wing legislator from Minnesota."

Rally participants carried a variety of disturbing signs. One placard had a health care message superimposed over dead bodies from Holocaust concentration camps. One referred to President Barack Obama as "Sambo." One depicted the president as the evil "Joker" from Batman movies. One referred to "Obama and his Marxist buddies."At one point, the crowd chanted "Nazi, Nazi."

The unidentified Kentucky woman was having none of that, and according to Editor and Publisher, she put in a call to the Gannett customer service center in Louisville, Ky., threatening to arm herself and "do what they did at Fort Hood." (Gannett owns the Times Herald.)

Gannett gave a copy of the recording to Kentucky authorities, who paid the woman a visit last week. No charges have yet been filed in the case.

It's at the point where threats of bloodbaths and sicko murder fantasies like this should be a crime already. Oh, I forgot, the FRC will say it's denying their preachers the right to express themselves. My bad.

There literally is no end to the extent by which Republican politicians will lie, distort, and manufacture statements in their efforts to disrupt, deny, and destroy the Obama administration's attempts to govern. At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on 9/11 trial, the Fort Hood shooter, and terrorism, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) decided to flip-flop on the designation of the Gitmo detainees. Are they "unlawful enemy combatants" or are they "prisoners of war"?

SESSIONS: The enemy, who could of been obliterated on the battlefield on one day, but was captured instead does not then become a common American criminal. They are first a prisoner of war, once they're captured. The laws of war say, as did Lincoln and Grant, that the prisoners will not be released when the war - until the war ends. How absurb is it to say that we will release people who plan to attack us again?

Sessions seems to be saying that because these detainees were captured by the military, they have become prisoners of war and should not be released - even if found not guilty or after serving a prison term (assuming less than a life sentence) - until the "war on terror" is over (which, under a Republican point of view, will never be over). But on the other hand, SecDef Don Rumsfeld and the other fun-loving bunch of Bushites were very firm about NOT calling them "prisoners of war" because they were not supposed to get rights under the Geneva Convention (or any other form of legal writs - see waterboarding, justification of).

In fact, as one of the commenters at the TPM post notes, there was public law developed to explicitly designate any non-US citizen who was accused of supporting terrorism or acting against the United States as a terrorist as being eligible for military commissions.

I thought like you until I read this, from the Military Commissions Act: "‘(e) Geneva Conventions Not Establishing Private Right of Action- No alien unprivileged enemy belligerent subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a basis for a private right of action."

See: here.

This discussion becomes quickly complex with legal passages as a debate over whether the military tribunals should take KSM or if the federal court system has adequate jurisdiction. But it's just so interesting how Republican politicians adroitly jump back and forth as to the question of the detainees' status to how it best fits their argument of the day - are we talking about Geneva convention rights, or are we talking about the process of legal courts?

And because I want to give credit to the interesting comments over at TPM, I will close with the following observations by the commenters:

"I guess when the Right/GOP can say, print (Palin's myth filled book), promote anything without any accountability by the Beltway Press, the GOP has no need for intellectually honest consistency in their claims."

"When did Sessions stop playing the banjo?"

UPDATE: Clarified the guilt point.

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The meme had been brewing for a few days among some of the Fox News guests -- particularly Michelle Malkin -- brought on to talk about the Fort Hood shootings, but it was Bill Sammon, during the broadcast of the memorial for the slain soldiers, who apparently made it official at Fox: The Fort Hood shootings were a terrorist attack -- comparable to 9/11 and Oklahoma City -- by a radical Islamist engaged in Muslim "jihad."

Now, it's not only the conventional wisdom at Fox News, it's one of their major attack points -- they're claiming that because President Obama and the rest of the media aren't adopting their presumptuous and hysterical meme, they're being "soft" on terrorism.

The meme gained momentum when Glenn picked up Sammon's ball and ran with it the next day, declaring: "If you don't call [Hasan] a terrorist, it clears a path for ... an extremist terrorist plan." That night, Sean Hannity explored the question at length with Michelle Malkin, as you can see from the video atop this post.

For Malkin and Hannity, "political correctness" -- which they blame for the military's failure to stop Hasan -- is actually code for "the refusal to engage in ethnic and religious profiling". Because such profiling, it's clear, is what they think the military (and the government generally) should do to prevent future such shootings.

The worst offender, though, has been Bill O'Reilly, who -- as you can see below -- not only harangued Sally Quinn for her reluctance to declare Nidal Hasan a "terrorist," but then devoted his leadoff Talking Points Memo segment last night to chastising the president and the rest of the media for their reluctance to embrace the meme.

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This exchange with Quinn was especially revealing:

O'Reilly: But you have a hard time saying the words "Muslim terrorist," and so does Obama. He has a hard time saying it. I don't know why you guys aren't saying it. You know, why, why?

Quinn: Well, I think, first of all, there are different kinds of terrorists. As I said, Timothy McVeigh --

O'Reilly: He's a Muslim terrorist! What do you mean, different kinds of terrorist? He killed people under the banner of jihad! That's who he is! What do you -- look, what do you want, him to come to your house with a strap-on bomb? The guy did it for jihadist reasons! "Allah Akbar!" That's the slogan! He mails Al Qaeda! Miss Quinn, you're a brilliant woman, and I'm not saying that facetiously. You are. A third-grader gets this, and you're resisting it! I wanna know why!

Quinn: Bill, you're making a very good case. I mean, he's Muslim, and he may well end up being a terrorist. We don't know for sure --

O'Reilly: I know for sure! Ninety percent of the people watching me know for sure! I don't know why you don't know for sure! What else do you need?

Quinn: I mean, you can call the guy who blew up -- you know, who shot up the Holocaust Museum a terrorist --

O'Reilly: Did he yell "Allah Akbar?" If he yelled "Allah Akbar," and he e-mailed Al Qaeda in Yemen, I'd call him that, Miss Quinn!

Quinn: OK, he's a Muslim terrorist.

O'Reilly: Thank you.

O'Reilly seems to have a peculiar idea of what constitutes "terrorism." His definition of the word seems to be "any act of violence by devout Muslims", or something along those lines.

That, of course, is quite a distance from the the legal definition of terrorism (from U.S. Code Title 22, Ch.38, Para. 2656f(d)):

(2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents;

This term, in fact, perfectly describes Holocaust Museum shooter James Von Brunn, who was, beyond any serious doubt, a classic right-wing "lone wolf" terrorist.

It is in fact still not clear, however, whether the description fits Nidal Hasan's motives in shooting 13 people to death. It is true that all kinds of evidence is emerging showing that Hasan was increasingly becoming politically radicalized.

What that evidence doesn't establish, though, is that he engaged in this horrendous act on behalf of those radical beliefs, or whether those beliefs simply formed part of the context in which he acted. There certainly haven't been any organizational ties established. We probably won't have any idea until Hasan himself starts talking, or at least his attorneys begin preparing his defense.

It's important to remember what mass-murder profiler Pat Brown told Fox's Brian Kilmeade:

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Revelations that the FBI, the Pentagon and even his medical colleagues were aware of Fort Hood shooting suspect Nidal Malik Hasan's extremist ideology have raised serious questions about the U.S. military's ability to screen, monitor and remove dangerous personnel from its ranks. But far from justifying the discrimination against patriotic American Muslims predictably called for by the usual suspects, the Fort Hood bloodbath should remind Americans that extremisms of all stripes have no place in the armed forces of the United States.

A nation which has chosen to depend on an all-volunteer military must have clear standards for admitting and retaining those courageous few who wish to serve in its name. Needless to say, they should not pose a threat to themselves or their fellow servicemen and women. They should uphold their oath to the Constitution of the United States and its government. And importantly, they should not undermine either American national security objectives or our timeless democratic values by advancing their own.

To be sure, as the always execrable Michelle Malkin fumed in the wake of the Fort Hood slaughter, potential Al Qaeda sympathizers and possibly deranged Muslim extremists like Major Hasan and Sgt. Hasan Akbar must be prevented from entering or quickly weeded out of the American military.

But the danger to America's security at home and goals abroad hardly ends there.

Consider the growing infiltration of neo-Nazi groups within the armed services. In 2006 and again in 2009, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group which monitors racist and right-wing militia groups, concluded:

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization...

The report quotes Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator, saying, "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members."

That zero-tolerance policy was put in place in the aftermath of the devastating Oklahoma City bombing which killed 168 Americans, the largest death toll from a terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland before 9/11.

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Right wingers have been doing their damnedest since the Fort Hood shootings last week to use them as an excuse to attack Muslims and generally do their favorite schtick, aka fearmongering.

Yesterday, during the Fox News broadcast of the memorial service for the victims at Fort Hood, Fox contributor Bill Sammon took this the next step: He began openly referring to the Fort Hood case as a "terrorist attack" and actually compared it to Oklahoma City and 9/11:

Sammon: I think it's really going to be key to see the tone and tenor of the Commander in Chief when he addresses this crowd. Because it's actually a very important moment in his presidency.

Think about this. This is the first time that he's going to be responding in a major way to, really the first major act of terrorism against the United States on our soil. And there's some similarities and some analogies to when President Clinton addressed the nation after Oklahoma City, to when George W. Bush went to address the nation from Ground Zero -- both of those times, just like this, were early on in the presidencies, and really, in those earlier two examples, to some extent, they were, uh, forums in which the presidents sort of found their voices, especially if you think about Ground Zero, where President Bush had trouble sort of presenting a real strong, uh, public face for the first couple of days, and then he went to Ground Zero and said, 'I can hear you, and pretty soon the people here are going to hear from all of us.'

So it's an important moment when a president addresses the nation in the wake of a terrorist act against U.S. interests.

Throughout the day Fox was running a logo calling the event "Attack on Fort Hood," and featuring investigative reports suggesting that the shooter, Nidal Hasan, was acting at the bidding of radical imams -- even though none of the evidence so far actually concretely shows that Hasan was acting as an Islamic terrorist.

Indeed, most of the evidence so far seems to indicate this was a militarized case of "going postal" -- which is always a horrific thing, but lacks the political/ideological component that always defines real acts of terrorism.

President Obama, in fact, has been urging the public not to leap to unwarranted conclusions about the shooter's motives. Looks like Fox News and Bill Sammon have decided to just ignore that advice. After all, they have an agenda to push.

The Political Carnival: It's not okay to listen to Obama's education speech at school, but watching the Fort Hood funeral, even if it causes deep emotional distress? That's a go. (h/t Relaxed Politics)

Figleaf (not work-safe): A perfect analogy to why 'no means no.'

Mock Paper Scissors: No, really, Peggy Noonan, it's a distinction to be the only person left from the Reagan administration "brand" that is not in jail, senile, or dead.

The Plum Line: Obama not taking the 'racist' bait of that moron Rupert Murdoch.

Off the beaten path, hey kids, it's Comic Panel Remix!!!