After his role in the John Ensign scandal I'm not sure why he's still in Congress, but yesterday he turned into an AM hate talk radio host and attacked Congress, Obama and Medicare:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) ripped his colleagues during a tour of northeast Oklahoma, calling them “career elitists,” “cowards” and said, “It’s just a good thing I can’t pack a gun on the Senate floor.”

Coburn’s gun-on-the-floor comment comes less than a month after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) made a triumphant return to the Capitol and the House floor following her shooting in the head in January outside a Tucson supermarket.

OK, threatening to shoot members of Congress is never a good thing. Maybe there should be a bill that forbids this kind of thing being said in DC. You know, if Louie Gohmert's crazy bill which wanted to arm these Congressman was passed maybe they could have had an old fashioned shoot out --OK Corral style right in the Capitol. But he was on a roll that Rush Limbaugh would have been proud of. Next up, he made up the claim that health care for seniors was better before Medicare ever came along.

He said the nation’s health care system was better before Medicare existed, even as he noted that some people received poor care at the time and doctors often accepted baked goods or chickens in partial payment.

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Yesterday we had another act of violence by a right-wing extremist intent on attacking and harming the government, inflamed by far-right conspiracy theories about 9/11 and other supposed instances of government "tyranny":

Internet postings linked to the suspected gunman in a Pentagon subway shooting suggest long-held frustration with the government's reach into the private life of Americans.

The suspect, John Patrick Bedell, 36, died after exchanging gunfire with two police officers. He spent weeks driving to the Capital area from the West Coast, authorities said Friday.

A blog connected to him via the social networking site LinkedIn outlines a growing distrust of the federal government. The blog suggests a criminal enterprise run out of the government could have staged the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

It was the latest batch of conspiracy-laden Internet postings to surface since Thursday night's shooting.

Bedell died Thursday night from head wounds received in a volley of fire with police. Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police, said the two injured officers and another officer who came to their assistance fired upon Bedell at the subway entrance into the Pentagon building in Arlington, Va.

"He came here from California," Keevill said. "We were able to identify certain locations that he spent that last several weeks making his way from the West coast to the East coast."

Keevill described Bedell as "very well educated" and well-dressed, saying Bedell was wearing a suit, armed with two 9 millimeter semiautomatic weapons and carried "many magazines" of ammunition. There was more ammunition in Bedell's car, which authorities found in a local parking garage, Keevill said.

[UPDATE: Think Progress has more on Bedell's background as a right-wing extremist.]

NBC's Jim Miklaszewski assured us this morning that there was no indication this was "terrorism." Likewise, the Associated Press report had a similar assurance:

Investigators have found no immediate connection to terrorism. The attack that superficially wounded two officers guarding the massive Defense Department headquarters appears to be a case of "a single individual who had issues," Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police, said Friday.

Excuse me, but WTF?

It seems to be the new standard among journalists that terrorism is now defined only as conspiracy-based international terrorism. Lone-wolf domestic terrorism? That's now just "a single individual who had issues."

You remember when an anti-tax radical flew his plane into IRS offices in Austin a couple of weeks ago in an attempt to blow those offices up, the Foxite media were eager to proclaim that it was not an act of terrorism, too.

As we explained then:

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Earlier this week, NBC Nightly News ran a smart, concise segment on the case of Jerry and Joe Kane, the two right-wing extremists who killed two police officers in West Memphis, Arkansas, and then were themselves gunned down in a hail of police bullets.

Mind you, it came a month and a half after the incident itself. And it actually didn't tell you anything readers of Crooks and Liars would have learned back in May.

But it's important and noteworthy when the mainstream media notice these stories, because too often they're buried in the daily deluge of Foxian garbage. (Of course, Fox has not reported on this story at all.)

I was a bit more struck, actually, by the superb and insightful reportage of Trevor Aaronson, Kristina Goetz, and Cindy Wolff (not to mention some unsung city editor) at the Memphis Commercial Appeal, following up the story they covered so well at the time:

Like father, like son: Three families' lives intersect in West Memphis shootout

It looks at the three families destroyed by this tragedy, and all needlessly. I was struck by this passage about Jerry Kane:

"You were always looking over your shoulder to make sure he wasn't there," said Forest Mayor Dave Hankins.

"You never knew what he was going to do. I always thought he was an unstable individual."

Joe Kane went to a church-run preschool with the mayor's son and once invited his classmate to go on a family field trip.

"I wouldn't have trusted him (Jerry Kane) with my dog or my cat if I had one," Hankins said, adding Joe Kane was "coerced in everything he did."

Kane told the police chief more than once he'd shoot him if he came back on his property.

"He'd say, 'The next time you come on my property, you're a dead man,'" Rickabaugh said. "... He thoroughly believed the government had no authority over him."

Though actually, the most striking portrait in the story is that of Joe Kane, the 16-year-old who turned killer at his dad's behest -- how he got twisted, and why:

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(image courtesy of Mediaite)

It's no secret that CNN is tacking hard right, trying to pick up Fox News viewers. Hiring the likes of Bushie, Fran Townsend, and more recently, bringing right wing extremist "blogger" Erick Erickson on board and of course, their inexplicably positive coverage of the ongoing sham known as the Tea Party Express.

Tommy Christoper at Mediaite posted a story on April 4th respectfully refuting some claims made by C&L's Karoli, that CNN was actively pimping the tea party movement:

Upon closer inspection, however, it appears that while the effect of CNN’s coverage may be to promote the Tea Party Express, that’s not the intent. I think CNN is looking for another kind of gold in them thar Tea Party hills.

Fair enough. He disagreed with Karoli's opinion, but he kept digging and what do you know -- it appears that CNN is actively reaching out to far right propagandists like Newsbusters, touting how "fair and balanced" they really are:

A few days ago, I took a look at a Crooks and Liars post that suggested CNN was “pimping” the Great American “Tea Party Express PR and Propaganda Tour.” While I agreed with much of the post, I didn’t think CNN’s motivation was to promote the Tea Party tour, but rather, to be in the right place at the right time when something juicy happens.

As it turns out, reporting by conservative Newsbusters seems to confirm elements of liberal Crooks and Liars‘ thesis, or at the very least, that CNN is trying to have it both ways.

Apparently, CNN has become so desperate to boost ratings and attract Fox viewers, that they've actually stooped to wooing conservative bottom feeders like Michelle Malkin. (warning, link goes to her site) Christopher also posts an e-mail sent to Newsbusters from someone at CNN attacking their lefty critics:

“Clearly our critics from the left don’t think we should be covering the Tea Party movement in the way we are and clearly CNN thinks it’s a legitimate and important story.

If anyone from Newsbusters is interested in this angle – let me know.”

Well, this CNN employee is right - we lefties would definitely prefer that they not cover an illegitimate, astroturfed group of white, angry, racist fringe lunatics and militia nuts as though they were a legitimate, grass roots political organization. What next? Will CNN hire Charles Dyer as a "military analyst?"

Brick, Liberty Tool, Model Mark One dash A. - from right-wing website.

As David Neiwert's been pointing out for a while, right-wing extremist fury is only growing now that we have a black Democrat in the White House. Now that the health-care bill has actually passed, and the right wing has bought the hysteria that this is an "assault on liberty," expect this - and worse:

Authorities in Wichita and some other cities across the country are investigating vandalism against Democratic offices, apparently in response to health care reform.

And on Monday, a former Alabama militia leader took credit for instigating the actions.

Mike Vanderboegh, of Pinson, Ala., former head of the Alabama Constitutional Militia, put out a call on Friday for modern "Sons of Liberty" to break the windows of Democratic Party offices nationwide in opposition to health care reform. Since then, vandals have struck several offices, including the Sedgwick County Democratic Party headquarters in Wichita.

"There's glass everywhere," said Lyndsay Stauble, executive director of the Sedgwick County Democratic Party. "A brick took out the whole floor-to-ceiling window and put a gouge in my desk."

Stauble said the brick, hurled through the window between Friday night and Saturday morning, had "some anti-Obama rhetoric" written on it.

Vandals also smashed the front door and a window at Rep. Gabrielle

Giffords' office in Tucson early Monday, hours after the Arizona Democrat voted for the health care reform package.

Over the weekend, a brick shattered glass doors at the Monroe County Democratic Committee headquarters in Rochester, N.Y. Attached to the brick was a note that said, "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice" — a quote from Barry Goldwater's 1964 acceptance speech as the Republican presidential candidate.

And on Friday, a brick broke a window at Rep. Louise Slaughter's district office in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Slaughter, a Democrat, was a vocal supporter of the health care reform bill passed by the House on Sunday.

Tyler Longpine, spokesman for the Kansas Democratic Party, called the incidents troubling.

"It's kind of an alarming context," he said. "We haven't had any trouble here, but we're fortunate enough to be on the seventh floor of an office building in Topeka." However, he added, "Most of our county offices are storefronts, which are a little bit more vulnerable to that kind of intimidation."

Vanderboegh posted the call for action Friday on his blog, "Sipsey Street Irregulars." Referring to the health care reform bill as "Nancy Pelosi's Intolerable Act," he told followers to send a message to Democrats.

"We can break their windows," he said. "Break them NOW. And if we do a proper job, if we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democrat party headquarters across this country, we might just wake up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary."

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Dave Neiwert and I have been writing a book for over two months now and in my research I discovered how easily manipulated movement conservatives from the 70's and 80's are when it comes to characters they see in film and television. It also extends to today, since we've seen how the torture scenes in 24 have also had an impact on right-wingers.

I never believed previously that music or TV shows could really influence people in their thinking because we can discern the difference between reality and fiction, but not so for conservatives. After right-wing extremist conservatives like Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist watched the movie Patton, they totally flipped out over it and became obsessed with the anti-communism and pro-military stances it championed. They believed Scott was real.

In Nina Easton's book, Gang of Five, she detailed Ralph Reed and other College Republican leaders' reactions to George C. Scott's performance in the movie:

Several hundred college students cheering a call to arms is something I shall not forget. In short order, gruesome Patton guerrilla talk became Ralph's forte: "I paint my face and travel at night," he infamously explained to a reporter ten years later. "You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag."

--

One year, the College Republicans Christmas card featured a photo of Patton standing on a stone, binoculars in hand, under the words, "Merry Christmas from the front." Abramoff, who cultivated an image of a reasonable adult, forswore Patton's gutter language (though he got a thrill out of the fact that screen writer Francis Ford Coppola had intended his audiences to be horrified by Patton's antics, when in reality young conservatives fell in love with the tyrannical general.)

So I fell off my couch laughing when Bill O'Reilly inserted scenes from Patton to attack President Obama's Afghanistan speech with the other night. Movement conservatives obviously view war as a fictitious movie, explosions and intense battles used for nothing more than dramatic effect. And the lives lost are but mere props.

They actually believed that George C. Scott was General Patton, and so they want Democratic politicians to live up to an Oscar-winning actor's performance rather than the reality we actually face. Whenever progressives pointed out Bush's awful communication skills, they defended him at every turn. Conservatives often criticize Obama's speeches because he's too mesmerizing and effective for them and they hate that, because George Bush failed miserably when he tried to communicate with the public.

O'Reilly: Talking points believes the bigger problem is Mr. Obama's lack of passion for victory. What the nation needed to hear last night was a little General Patton...

No matter how you feel about the speech (I want out of Afghanistan)this illustrates the kind of delusional reality conservatives labor under on a daily basis. BillO is looking for Obama to be George C. Scott instead of the president of the United States. Simply amazing. We want action not words.

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Judy Thomas in the Kansas City Star has an amazing piece (picked up by MSNBC) about the online fund-raiser being planned for Scott Roeder, the right-wing extremist who shot Dr. George Tiller in the head in his church:

An Army of God manual. A prison cookbook compiled by a woman doing time for abortion clinic bombings and arsons. An autographed bullhorn.

These are among the items that abortion foes plan to auction on eBay and other Web sites in a fundraiser for Scott Roeder, the Kansas City man charged with killing Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller.

“This is unique,” said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who will sign the bullhorn. “Nobody’s ever done this before. The goal is that everybody makes money for Scott Roeder’s defense.”

One abortion-rights leader called the auction deplorable and said it could lead to more violence.

“The network of extremists promoting and defending the murder of doctors is contributing to escalating threats against clinics and doctors across the country,” said Kathy Spillar, executive vice president of the Feminist Majority Foundation.

Roeder, charged with first-degree murder in the May 31 shooting of Tiller, is scheduled to go to trial in January.

Perhaps even more appalling is the line of defense they hope to pursue in the courts with this money:

Leach and others would like to help Roeder hire a lawyer to present what is known as a necessity defense. That strategy would argue that Tiller was killed to prevent a greater harm — killing babies. Other anti-abortion activists charged with violent crimes have tried to use such a defense but with little success.

Yeah, let's legalize killing abortion doctors. Sounds like a job for Antonin Scalia. One can only hope this defense has zero success, as it has in the past.

Rachel Maddow also featured a segment on this story last night on her MSNBC show, including an interview with the attorney for Tiller's family, who says he'll move to have the court attach any funds they raise on Roeder's behalf:

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Is Eason Jordan getting played? The right wing extremists need to attack the media at all costs, so there is no upside for Jordan in this...The Liberal Avengers has more...

Update: Usually when people slime you relentlessly---you don't reward them. That's just me...Eason obviously doesn't mind....