Here's a collection of posts by angry, right wing conservatives who were freaking out when the DHS report was released. Obviously our soldiers aren't the focus of the report, but the right wing kooks needed to find something to attack it with because the report perfectly highlighted the issue at hand. And as we've seen so far, right-wing violence is up dramatically since President Obama was elected.

Limbaugh: Bring me the head of Janet Napolitano!

Pat Robertson urges his callers to crash Homeland Security hotline

Hannity: It's an insult to suggest that veterans are bias-crime victims

Conservatives are trying to whitewash far-right terrorists out of our memories There was Bill Bennett, that right-wing moral icon, telling John King's "State of the Union" panel yesterday on CNN that DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano's clear explanation wasn't good enough.

Is the DHS watching returning veterans? Only when they join far-right hate groups -- O'Reilly says the report was "unnecessary," cooked up by a bevy of myopic "far left" liberals freshly ensconced in their DHS offices.

Now watch the wingnut fun begin! Sotomayor, a child of the Bronx, has already been the focus of attacks from the librul media, so we can only speculate as to how much worse the right-wing assaults will be. She'll be seen as slightly to the left of Abbie Hoffman by the time they're done with her:

President Obama this morning will announce that U.S. appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York is his pick to replace retiring justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court, White House officials said.

The 10:15 a.m. announcement will be made at the White House, before Obama leaves Washington for a two-day trip to California and Las Vegas that will focus mostly on fundraising events.

The president finalized his deliberations at Camp David over the weekend, and notified his staff this morning.

Media Matters did a roundup of the Sotomayor attacks a few weeks back, including the hit job done by a New Republic writer:

Despite the glaring flaws, Rosen's assessment of Sotomayor was widely adopted by other media figures.

Mark Halperin, Time's conventional-wisdom maven, announced "Jeff Rosen Raises Warning Flags on Sotomayor" and described "Jeff" Rosen as "the New Republic's legal eagle." (What of Rosen's thin sourcing and dishonest quoting? Who cares! It's Jeff! He's a legal eagle!) The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder touted Rosen's piece as a reflection of "the respectable intellectual center." (Ambinder's colleague, Ta-Nehisi Coates responded: "You don't get to be the 'respectable intellectual center' and then practice your craft in the gossip-laden, ignorant muck. Not for long anyway.")

If the "respectable intellectual center" approached the prospect of a Sotomayor nomination by doctoring quotes in order to trash her intelligence, you might wonder what the disreputable fringe did. Well, National Review's John Derbyshire and Mark Hemmingway described her as "dumb and obnoxious," but they weren't really moving the ball forward in the anti-Sotomayor campaign; they were just interpreting Rosen's work.

Fox News' Andrew Napolitano told listeners on his radio show that Sotomayor "has a reputation for not being a very hard worker" -- like Rosen, citing anonymous law clerks to back up the claim.

Even David Letterman got in on the act. Here's Bob Somerby, describing Letterman's Sotomayor sketch:

Letterman's clip was openly racial/ethnic, a throwback to what once seemed to be an earlier day. With it, he gave viewers a throwback first impression of a sweaty, crazy, yelling jurist -- of a woman who graduated summa cum laude from Princeton in her real life, among other acts of distinction. But this astounding bad judgment by Big Humor Dave followed an act of grotesque judgment by the New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen. Rosen authored a gruesome post built on anonymous sources which -- let's be honest -- openly trafficked in racial stereotypes.

Dumb. Lazy. Temperamental. It's enough to make you wonder how she made it from the South Bronx to Princeton, Yale, and a federal judgeship. And remember: She didn't get there the George W. Bush way. You know many lazy, stupid people who win Princeton's highest academic prize?

Worst of all, there's no reason to think that the treatment Sonia Sotomayor received from the media over the past week will stop with her. The coverage of Sotomayor has clearly been built at least in part on gender and racial stereotypes, so we can probably expect similar coverage of other women and minorities who are mentioned as possible nominees.

Guess we'll have to sit tight and wait a while longer to find out for sure. Who do you like from this list, and why?

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is considering a list of more than six contenders for the Supreme Court that is dominated by women and Hispanics, one that includes judges and leaders from own his administration who have never donned a judicial robe.

Among those under consideration are Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Appeals Court judges Sonia Sotomayor and Diane Pamela Wood. California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno is also under review by Obama.

Sources familiar with Obama's deliberations confirmed the names to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because no candidates have been revealed by the White House. The confirmation amounts to the first time any name has been directly tied to Obama.

One official cautioned that Obama is considering other people who have not been publicly mentioned. And more names may be added as the administration considers a replacement for retiring Justice David Souter.

The video I selected has nothing to do with the Sunday shows, just one that I thought was cool. In truth, it's the same people having the same conversations with the bobbleheads this morning. Quite literally. With the media panic over the H1N1 or "swine" flu in overdrive, we are being treated to appearances by Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano, New HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Acting CDC Director Richard Besser on not one or two but FIVE of the morning shows. Will they be asked why we should be so scared of H1N1 when regular flu kills 20,000 a year without closing borders or mandating flu shots? Or the almost 15,000 people who died of AIDS? No? Well, then how about how Canadian pigs actually contracted swine flu from a farm worker? Not to be outdone, newly minted Democratic Senator Arlen Specter shows up on two shows and is a planned subject of at least one other. Considering the kind of Republican he was, I don't think we should anticipate such great shakes from him switching parties.

ABC's "This Week" — Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; acting CDC Director Richard Besser.

CBS' "Face the Nation" — Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa.; Besser; Sebelius; Napolitano.

NBC's "Meet the Press" — Sebelius; Napolitano; Besser; Specter.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Joe Klein, Kelly O'Donnell, Kathleen Parker, Howard Fineman. Topics: Will Arlen Specter provide Obama a reliable 60th vote in the Senate? Will the Republican Party adjust to regain national prominence? Meter Questions: Will Republicans genuinely reevaluate? YES: 4 NO: 8; With Specter joining the Dems, will health care pass? YES: 7 No: 5.

CNN's "State of the Union" — Leahy; House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va.; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney; Napolitano; Sebelius; Besser.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - This week on GPS, Fareed sits down for an exclusive interview with Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the Pentagon. Gates is the guest for the hour and the discussion covers the world: the current crisis in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, global nuclear proliferation, and U.S. imperialism.

"Fox News Sunday" — Napolitano; Sebelius; Besser; Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and John Ensign, R-Nev.

What's catching your eye this morning?

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Keith Olbermann, on Countdown last night, brought the whammy down on the wingnut talking heads at Fox (and the rest of the conservative media as well) for their ongoing attempts to blame immigrants for the spread of the swine flu from Mexico:

Well, yes, you are a racist. Exactly how does that apply, though, to the people who the Centers for Disease Control confirmed actually carried the Swine Flu from Mexico to the U.S., a group of Catholic school students from New York City, who spent Spring Break in Cancun. Uncontrolled Catholic immigration, open borders for private school kids reckless?

Anyway, unswayed by the facts, the Republican echo chamber tried to stir the American melting pot with a classic recipe of hate and fear.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I thought that this line, though, was very ironic, this morning in one of the articles I read about surveillance at the Mexican border. You thought we had an immigration problem, well now we might actually want to prevent the sick people from crossing over the border.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Chaos in Mexico; from earthquakes to Swine Flu, will it mean more illegals heading for the U.S.

GLENN BECK, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Does anybody wish maybe we could control the border just a little bit at this point.

SHEPPARD SMITH, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Everybody is e-mailing, going the illegals are bringing it across the border. Relax.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Tonight, Swine Flu spreads from Mexico to the United States. Is this the latest border crisis.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The U.S. is not currently testing travelers from Mexico. But customs officials are wearing protective clothing.

MICHAEL SAVAGE, “THE SAVAGE NATION”: Illegal aliens are carriers of the new strain of Human Swine Avian Flu from Mexico. Is this a terrorist attack?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Some, though, say the solution is to close the border.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now talk that we should even close the border?

BECK: If this is so important, why haven‘t we closed the border.

NEAL BOORTZ, “THE NEAL BOORTZ SHOW”: There‘s the bio-terrorism angle. What better way to sneak a virus in this country than to give it to Mexicans.

This kind of talk -- directly associating the targets of a "drive them out" campaign with disease -- is classic eliminationist rhetoric. It's not surprising that it's bubbling up out of Fox News' fetid cauldron, either.

Tom Allison at Media Matters put together a first-round look at some of the ugliness:

-- Savage declaring that Mexicans "are a perfect mule -- perfect mules for bringing this virus into America."

-- Michelle Malkin warning that the pandemic was the product of "uncontrolled immigration."

-- Beck warning that the pandemic will create a crush of people trying to flee north across our border.

And that's just scratching the surface. As Eric Ward at Imagine 2050 observes, some of the nativist right's more inflammatory figures were saying even uglier things.

Writes Nezua at The Sanctuary:

The stances of those who most vocally oppose immigration today are so predictable that one could paint a face on a septic-tainted soccer ball and paste up word balloons and rest well, knowing that The Nativist Lobby point of view on any immigration-related topic will end in "deport them all" and "seal the borders" if not "round them up" and other tired ideas. And nobody reading now needs a reminder of how throughout time, both Latin America as well as all immigrants have been slurred and painted with the brush of disease by those resistant to changing demographics.

The NCLR's blog points out that this fearmongering has real life-and-death consequences:

It's unfortunate, then, that certain individuals with an obvious axe to grind are shamelessly exploiting a public health emergency for their own purposes. It's not surprising that some are implying that all immigrants are a threat to our health-that's standard fare on the hate group circuit.

Ironically, the very act of attempting to demonize and stigmatize entire groups, and even entire countries, is likely to impede these and other critical steps that the authorities are taking to protect all Americans from the spread of the flu, for example:

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I guess veterans are the right wing's new favorite sacred cow. Having discovered, via the phony DHS domestic-terrorism controversy, that they can gleefully club liberals over the head with anything even remotely resembling a slight to the sacred honor of American veterans -- such slights, evidently, including insufficiently abject prostration -- Republicans are now wielding said club at every available opportunity.

Let's face it: the Right really hates that the folks in the military in fact love President Obama. And so propagating the notion that Democrats are "anti-military" is a big deal right now.

Last week, for instance, as the new federal hate-crimes bill was passing out of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Rep. Tom Rooney of Florida tried to include veterans in the list of protections.

This was a classic right-wing twofer: Work to undermine the hate-crimes bill, and smear Democrats at the same time! Pretty, clever, eh?

Sure enough, after Glenn Beck coughed this one up Friday night, there was Sean Hannity last night, regurgitating Beck's stale hairball:

Hannity: Now, Congresswoman, including our soldiers in this bill would not belittle anybody. And I think you and Janet Napolitano need to revisit your opinion of our veterans.

Actually, Feeney's proposal would render the legislation moot and unconstitutional, because it would then be predicated on the idea of creating "protected classes." And, as has been already explained many times, hate-crimes bills aren't about creating "protected categories" -- they are strictly written to encompass the motives of the perpetrator:

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The American Right is never happy unless it has someone it collectively decides will be the Voodoo Doll of the Moment -- a single liberal figure upon whom it can focus all its energies at destroying. And it's obvious that Janet Napolitano is the going to be the first Obama administration official they go after.

You can tell, because already they are starting to lie, distort, and generally smear her any way they can; no hypocrisy is too gross to indulge along the way. No matter that the right-wing extremism report at the heart of the controversy is in fact accurate in every detail.

Yesterday ex-Sen. Rick Santorum was on Greta Van Susteren's show doing the lying, smearing, and hypocrisy schtick for the sake of running down Napolitano:

Santorum: Well, it's not a good thing for this administration to have a Secretary of Homeland Security, who has over 40,000 veterans working in that department out there attacking veterans as potential homeland security problems.

This is flatly false: the report does not smear veterans, but appropriately raises a red flag over the indisputable fact that right-wing extremists intend to recruit veterans.

On it went:

Van Susteren: She didn't actually write the report. She didn't read it before it went out, maybe.

Santorum: It's her department -- the people that she hired. I mean, these are people that she hired, that the Obama administration hired to write this. This isn't holdovers from the Bush administration that wrote this. These are her folks!

This is simply a baldfaced falsehood. These reports were in fact commissioned under the Bush adminstration, as was reported last week by Fox's Shepard Smith and Catherine Herridge:

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From Democracy Now April 24, 2009.

The Department of Homeland Security released a report last week that warned right-wing extremist groups are gaining new recruits by exploiting fears about the economy and the election of the nation’s first black president. We speak with Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is facing calls for her ouster from a number of House Republicans in the wake of a department memo that warned of right-wing political extremism in the United States.

The report, which was released last week, warns that right-wing extremist groups are gaining new recruits by exploiting fears about the economy and the election of the nation’s first black president. The report predicts a worsening economy will to lead more people joining militias and skinhead groups and carrying out individual acts modeled after Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

A handful of Republicans in the House are calling for Napolitano to step down in the wake of the report. House Minority Leader John Boehner said the report includes, quote, “about two-thirds of Americans who might go to church, who may have served in the military, who may be involved in community activities…I just don’t understand how our government can look at the American people and say, ‘You’re all potential terrorist threats.’”

Idaho has long been the center of white supremacist groups in the United States. Mark Potok is the director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. They recently released a report that finds the number of violent hate groups in the US has skyrocketed since 2000. He joins us via Democracy Now! stream from Alabama. Welcome to Democracy Now!

MARK POTOK: Well, thank you so much for having me.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Mark, your reaction to the controversy now and the calls for Janet Napolitano’s ouster?

MARK POTOK: I think it is completely a tempest in a teacup. You know, the things that Boehner and others have said are very hard to square with actually reading the report. You know, basically, the report has been accused of saying that all conservatives and all veterans are this huge suspect class, people who may, you know, take up arms and start blowing up federal buildings.

The reality is, is when you read the report, it doesn’t say anything remotely like that. You know, the reference to veterans is—what it really says is that white supremacists are interested in attempting to recruit returning veterans because of their skills. It does not say, in any sense, that these people are prone to joining the groups, that we should look at all veterans with a wary eye. And it certainly doesn’t make any suggestion like that with regard to conservatives.

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