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[H/t Heather]

Apparently, the SPLC's intelligence director, Mark Potok agrees with our assessment of the Obama administration's disastrous failure to take right-wing domestic terrorism seriously. Here is on The Ed Show the other night, discussing the report in the Washington Post on ex-Homeland Security analyst Daryl Johnson raising the red flag on the issue:

POTOK: What it means in concrete terms is that law enforcement officials, agencies out there in the 50 states, are not getting the intelligence that was very useful to them in helping to understand what was going on out there.

What DHS really did or used to do was to produce intelligence. It wasn‘t so much building actual criminal cases as in intelligence as to what was going on out there on the radical right.

Daryl‘s report was really a very prescient report. It very much fell in line with our own independent findings. And of course, it was immediately confirmed. As it was being pilloried by people like Michelle Malkin, the columnist, by the American Leagues and so on, things were happening that absolutely confirmed it.

Very shortly after the leak of the report, for instance, George Tiller, an abortion provider, was murdered. Not long after that, I‘m sure viewers will remember, a guard was murdered at the Holocaust Museum by a well-known neo-Nazi.

And the list goes on and on. In January of this year, a man tried to murder hundreds of people at a Martin Luther King Day Parade in Spokane, Washington, A well known neo-Nazi, allegedly at least.

SCHULTZ: Daryl Johnson—

POTOK: So it‘s a disaster basically.

SCHULTZ: You spoke with him. How adamant is he about the fact that this lack of resources being focused here is really playing into the increase of some of these events that you are talking about?

POTOK: Well, Daryl is a friend. And I think that Daryl is really deeply concerned. And it is not only him. I know that he‘s received all kinds of messages in the last few days since he went public from other people in law enforcement, talking about how very right he was.

And, you know, the shame of this, as you suggested in your intro, is that Secretary Napolitano essentially seemed to have acted out of mere political cowardice. You know, the fact is that the DHS report of 2009 did not pillory conservatives. It did not suggest that all veterans were potential Timothy McVeighs or people who were concerned about abortion or immigration were terrorists.

And yet it was accused of all of those things. And the reaction of the Department of Homeland Security was after a very brief and kind of weak knee defense of the report, was to absolutely pull back and, moreover, to suggest that Daryl had gone out of normal channels, that this was an unauthorized release of the report, when in fact it had been fully authorized.

The secretary was briefed on the report by Daryl personally before it was released. And then beyond that, as you suggested already, the unit was gutted. It has produced not a single substantial report since the report of 2009. Daryl has left the agency, as have four other senior analysts there.

So essentially, the department is doing nothing because it is afraid of offending conservatives, or at least the leadership of the department.

Of course, we've been writing about this issue for awhile now. But it is yet further confirmation -- beyond simply the reported data already available -- that we have a serious problem on our hands.

Unfortunately, there has been no indication whatsoever from the administration that it intends to address the issue. Apparently it's bought into the Beltway Village narrative that merely bringing up these matters is deeply uncivil.

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Last week we observed -- especially after the arrest of a neo-Nazi in Spokane for a planned bombing of a parade the next day -- that Bill O'Reilly owed Mark Potok a big apology for smearing him after he offered the opinion that, as domestic-terrorism threats go, the extremist right remains a much more potent problem than homegrown Islamic radicals. (OReilly repeated the smear even after the Spokane arrest.)

Of course, we knew that wasn't gonna happen. But last night on The O'Reilly Factor, we got to see the next best thing: Potok pinning O'Reilly's ears to the wall for the smear.

O'REILLY: Now a few weeks ago, Mr. Potok, you said on CNN the biggest terrorist threat is coming from the radical right community. Do you still stand by that?

MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: That is false as I think you know. I said the biggest domestic threat to America was from domestic radical right not domestic jihadists, in other words, not home-grown American Muslims. That was twisted on your show by you.

(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: All right. So you -- it wasn't twisted by me -- no, no, it wasn't twisted because your statement is dubious. It wasn't well -- with all due respect because we like you as a guest -- your statement was not well put.

Let me read your exact statement ok. It's not our biggest -- this is talking about Muslim jihadists. "It's not our biggest domestic threat. I think that pretty clearly comes from the radical right in this country."

Now I'll dispute that. I think that Muslims jihadists are a much bigger threat than the radical right and the numbers back me up: Fort Hood and Fort Dick.

POTOK: Bill, can I just have one --

O'REILLY: Yes. Go ahead.

POTOK: One thing I want to say, immediately afterwards you said, Muslim terrorists or jihadists have killed tens of thousands of people all over the world. Well, that is true. I don't disagree with that at all. I certainly think that as an external matter, Al-Qaeda is far greater threat. I don't think there's much question about that. But that's not what I said.

O'REILLY: All right. I'm glad you are saying that.

In fact, it might be helpful to remember exactly what it was that Potok actually said on CNN:

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Well, we've known for some time that Kris Kobach -- one of the co-authors of Arizona's Nativist immigration law, SB1070, and a frequent guest on Fox News whenever they need a reliably right-wing talking point on various immigration issues -- is something of a crook and a liar, since he rarely appears on TV without misleading the audience and presenting one fake "fact" or another that turns out to be utterly false.

Now the Southern Poverty Law Center has revealed that -- prior to his recent election as Kansas' Secretary of State -- Kobach basically made a living by scamming various municipalities into adopting outrageously unconstitutional anti-immigration statutes, and then leaving them holding the very large, expensive, dripping and fetid-smelling bag:

When Mr. Kobach Comes to Town

[snip]

The towns that passed nativist laws in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Texas and Nebraska, along with the state of Arizona, have spent millions of dollars to defend them in court, and almost every judicial decision so far has gone against them. One community, faced with skyrocketing legal costs, had to raise property taxes, and another was forced to cut personnel and special events and even outsource its library.

That was just the beginning. The four towns and one state examined in this report all saw a crisis in race relations as conflicts between Latino immigrants and mostly white natives escalated. Latinos reported being threatened, shot at, subjected to racial taunts and more. Police are having trouble getting cooperation from any in their Latino communities. Pro-immigrant activists have been threatened with notes that promise to “shed blood” to “take back” communities. The mayor of one town had his house vandalized after opposing a proposed law and was warned by federal agents to be careful; he ended up retiring after four terms in office. Angry protests and counter-protests, along with dangerously rising tensions, have rocked one town after another. In some communities, business districts have largely collapsed.

Behind all of this stands one man: Kris Kobach, a former Kansas City law professor who was just elected Kansas secretary of state. For the better part of the last six years, Kobach has been chief legal counsel to the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which is the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). He helped to write and defend in court the laws in Hazleton, Valley Park, Farmers Branch, Fremont and Arizona, and he is seeking to do even more.

The report is quite complete, including a timeline for each of the four municipalities Kobach has "helped".

And in an important way, he's done the same thing for Arizona, where he convinced the electorate that a scapegoating strategy and installation of a police state for Latinos was the way to solve their immigration issues. The state is already suffering badly economically, and it's been made much worse by the economic boycott that resulted from SB1070 and the mass departure of Hispanics from the state. Kobach, of course, has had plenty of help in damaging Arizona's economy, including the state's governor. Meanwhile, as the state crumbles, the Arizona Senate president thinks the real imperative is to end birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants.

Of course, now that he's been elected Secretary of State in Kansas, Kobach can just walk away and smile. Meantime, as the SPLC observes, he gets to continue doing his work scamming communities eager to walk the bigot's path.

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When President Obama visited Camp Lejeune this morning, you have to wonder if this story was somewhere in the back of his mind:

A federal grand jury indicted a former Camp Lejeune Marine on Wednesday on charges that he threatened the life of Barack Obama, the U.S. Attorney's Office confirmed today.

Kody Brittingham, 20, formerly a lance corporal with 2nd Tank Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, was accused of making threats against Obama while he was president-elect, said Robin Zier, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office for the eastern district of North Carolina.

Brittingham was arrested by the Jacksonville Police Department on breaking and entering charges in mid-December 2008.

Naval investigators discovered a journal allegedly written by Brittingham in his barracks after his arrest by civilian authorities in December. The journal contained plans on how to kill the president, as well as white supremacist material, a federal law enforcement official said.

This incident is just one of many that are bubbling up across the American landscape right now. The right-wing race haters are not only motivated and out recruiting heavily, they're getting angrier by the day, especially the more Obama successfully advances his agenda. We've been writing about this for awhile now.

CNN's Rick Sanchez had on Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center yesterday to discuss this. The main point revolved around the SPLC's annual report on the State of Hate, written by David Holthouse:

From white power skinheads decrying "President Obongo" at a racist gathering in rural Missouri, to neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen hurling epithets at Latino immigrants from courthouse steps in Oklahoma, to anti-Semitic black separatists calling for death to Jews on bustling street corners in several East Coast cities, hate group activity in the U.S. was disturbing and widespread throughout 2008, as the number of hate groups operating in America continued to rise. Last year, 926 hate groups were active in the U.S., up more than 4% from 888 in 2007. That's more than a 50% increase since 2000, when there were 602 groups.

As in recent years, hate groups were animated by the national immigration debate. But two new forces also drove them in 2008: the worsening recession, and Barack Obama's successful campaign to become the nation's first black president. Officials reported that Obama had received more threats than any other presidential candidate in memory, and several white supremacists were arrested for saying they would assassinate him or allegedly plotting to do so.

At the same time, law enforcement officials reported a marked swelling of the extreme-right "sovereign citizens" movement that wreaked havoc in the 1990s with its "paper terrorism" tactics. Adherents are infamous for filing bogus property liens and orchestrating elaborate financial ripoffs.

The SPLC has an interactive map that lets you see where each of these hate groups is based and just who they are. As usual, California again leads the nation as the state with the most hate groups with 84; Florida is a distant second with 56.

Sanchez and Potok also discussed the recent case of the would-be dirty bomber in Bangor, Maine, whose plans were nipped in the bud when his angry wife shot him to death.

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As always, the remarkable thing about these cases is that these would have led the broadcasts at Fox and CNN (not to mention set off weeks' worth of obsessive posts at Michelle Malkin's joint) had the suspect been Muslim, Arab, or otherwise had brown skin.

As I noted previously:

In other words, hate groups are almost certainly going to be exploiting fresh opportunities for recruitment, both ideological and actual. The stage has been set by the past decade's demographic shift, but the Bush Recession will in any event give them a big jug of gasoline for their bonfire. Obama's election will give them a figure upon whom they can focus their hate, and the immigration debate will give them an issue to recruit and organize around.

Eventually, innocent bystanders in the general public will be the ones who pay the price.

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[Full disclosure: I write for the SPLC's blog, Hatewatch.]

When right-wingers got wind of the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center had designated a number of Religious Right organizations who specialize in rhetorically bashing gays and lesbians as hate groups, they and their allies on the Right came more or less unglued.

Now, rather than face up to the substance of the accusations, they're choosing to demonize the SPLC and their critics. Par for the course for this crowd.

What was especially noteworthy about the SPLC report was that it zeroed in on the fundamental falsity of the material attacking people in the LGBT community that these so-called "Christian" organizations distribute maliciously and knowingly. That is, they are lying baldfacedly, and they frankly seem not to care. Evidently, that 9th Commandment about bearing false witness and all that is now a disposable rule.

Jeremy Hooper noted that the Family Research Council -- one of the largest of the groups named -- launched a counteroffensive called "Stop Hating/Start Debating," with a press release that begins thus:

The surest sign one is losing a debate is to resort to character assassination. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal fundraising machine whose tactics have been condemned by observers across the political spectrum, is doing just that.

The hypocrisy, of course, is not just a laughable bug, but a definitive feature of these groups. Alvin McEwen at Pam's House Blend enumerates just how many ways the FRC's opening salvo is a farce.

Their political friends leapt into action too. Cliff Kincaid called the SPLC's hate-group designation a "racket" by conniving liberals. And Peter LaBarbera at Americans for Truth About Homosexuality -- also one of the designated groups -- complained that the SPLC never seems to pick on mean gay groups that fight back against the fundamentalist assault. Meanwhile, of course, he doubles down by claiming that all the lies against LGBT folks enumerated by the SPLC are in fact actually true. Uh-huh.

Perhaps the funniest attack came from Ed Meese at CNS News:

Former Attorney General Edwin Meese says it is “despicable” for the Southern Poverty Law Center to classify the Family Research Council and a dozen other top conservative organizations as “hate groups” similar to the Ku Klux Klan.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” Meese told CNSNews.com about the list published by the SPLC. “I know about seven or eight of those groups. I know the people very well. I know the groups very well, I’ve worked with them over the years, and I think it actually undermines the credibility of the Southern Poverty Law Center to make such a statement.”

Last week, the Southern Policy Law Center announced that it was going to classify the Family Research Council and 12 other organizations as “hate groups” because of their positions on homosexuality.

Among the groups being designated by the SPLC are the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, Coral Ridge Ministries, Family Research Institute, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, Illinois Family Institute, Liberty Counsel, MassResistance, National Organization for Marriage and the Traditional Values Coalition.

The SPLC said these organizations will be named to its "hate group" watch list.

But Meese said the Southern Poverty Law Center had cited no evidence whatsoever to show that the FRC or the other major pro-family conservative organizations were hate groups.

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They're crawling out from under the rocks everywhere. In Missouri, white supremacist Glenn Miller has declared his candidacy for the United States Senate, vowing to "reach every nook and cranny in the state" in his quest for votes and launching a new campaign web site at the URL whty.org. His opponents include Roy Blunt and Robin Carnahan, and his last try got him around 40 votes or so, but hey, any excuse to spread a little hate among friends, right?

Miller isn't your ordinary run-of-the-mill Klansman either. From Southern Poverty Law Center, 2004:

One of the first white supremacists to use paramilitary tactics with his North Carolina-based hate group — the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which later morphed into the White Patriot Party — Glenn Miller went on the lam in 1986 after mailing a letter to 5,000 people calling for "total war" against the feds, blacks and Jews.

Miller had also violated a court order, stemming from a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, prohibiting him from continuing to operate a paramilitary organization. After a nationwide manhunt, authorities tear-gassed him out of a mobile home in Ozark, Mo.

But Miller served only three years in prison, largely because he testified against 14 leading white supremacists in a 1988 Arkansas sedition trial. Among other things, Miller told the court that the late Order founder Robert Mathews had given him $200,000 in stolen money to finance the White Patriot Party.

To kick off his campaign, he's running a series of vile anti-Semitic ads hosted on the white supremacist site Vanguard News Network.

This is what happens when the dog whistle sounds among the wingnut contingent. Sure, they're not all racists, but they know how to stir up the ones who are violent, evil and malevolent.

I'm amazed Miller is qualified to be a candidate for the Senate. Doesn't a felony conviction disqualify him?

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Even before yesterday's March For America in Washington, D.C., many of us were aware that Roy Beck of the nativist anti-immigration outfit NumbersUSA was trying to whip up nativist sentiments at his site over the march -- which, according to the Washington Independent, actually attracted more than 200,000 people.

Sure enough, he showed up with a cameraman and three bodyguards. By the time it was over, the D.C. SWAT team descended and told Beck he had to remove himself from the crowd, and one of the bodyguards later was arrested for his reported assaults on a women.

What happened was this: A group of female mimes attending the march evidently decided they weren't going to sit idly by and let Beck use their event as a platform for his usual fearmongering propaganda -- they told Andrea Nill at the WonkRoom their intent was to keep Beck and Co. from picking any fights with marchers -- so they proceeded to make life miserable for them.

I came upon the scene rather late in the game. I'd heard there were some physical confrontations, so I set out in search of Beck and his crew. Before I found him, I spoke with two legal observers from the National Lawyers Guild on the north side of the mall who said they saw one of the bodyguards put a mime in a headlock. They also said the mimes had a large cluster of balloons they were using to annoy Beck, and the bodyguards were aggressively popping them; by the time the whole entourage had made it across the mall to the south side, the observers said, most of them had been popped.

I came upon them a short time later, and as you can see there were indeed only a handful of balloons left. You can also see the bodyguards popping those remaining, at one point grabbing one attached to the woman's wrist. They were subsequently followed down the mall by the whistle-tooting mimes, who did their level best to ruin Beck's interviews, as you can see. Then at one point a very angry black woman began venting her anger over Beck's presence.

Shortly after this, the D.C. SWAT team came over and pulled Beck aside and demanded he take his act to the next block, which was only lightly occupied by immigration marchers. And then they warned the mimes away when they tried to follow. (I later spoke with a young man who told me he had complained to the SWAT team that Beck and his crew were assaulting people, upon which they sprang into action.)

I interviewed Beck shortly after this (which I'll run shortly as a separate post). Then, after I walked away, police arrested the tall African American bodyguard you see in this video harassing the mimes.

Nill has more details on the arrest:

However, that doesn’t explain why Beck’s bodyguard is the one who ended up being arrested and charged with assault yesterday. Lena Graber, one of the three mimes who pressed charges against Beck’s bodyguard, talked with Wonk Room this morning. Graber explains that she and four other mimes followed Beck and his crew around for four hours in an effort to prevent Beck from picking a fight with demonstrators. According to Graber, Beck’s bodyguard pulled out a pocket knife and started popping the mimes’ balloons. Graber cannot provide details on the assault charges filed by the other two mimes, but she did provide an account of what happened to her yesterday:

They were pretty aggressive and they would sort of elbow us out of the way and say “Don’t touch me” as they were doing so. One of the bodyguards had white makeup all over his elbow and he was all upset that the mimes had gotten makeup on him…but our makeup was on our faces and I wasn’t face-bunting anyone so I felt like that was more incriminating evidence than anything else.

We each started with about 15 balloons that were on ribbons and the taller bodyguard had a pocket knife and he would grab the balloons and pop them with the knife. And at one point when I still had a lot of balloons they were tied around my upper arm…and I felt this yank on my arm where they were tied around. And I turned and he was pulling on all of the ribbons…so that was the only time I talked, I said “OW, that hurts. That’s attached to my arm, stop that.” And he didn’t stop and so I screamed as loud as I could. [...]

And oh yes: Apparently Beck and Co. have filed a complaint against the mimes and the SEIU peacekeepers whose work you can see here.

Here's Beck's own self-pitying video:

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It's now a fact: Whatever else the Tea Party movement may or may not have achieved, it can claim credit for at least one real phenomenon -- it has revived the far-right Patriot movement of the '90s.

We've been reporting it for the better part of a year now, and the New York Times recently confirmed it.

Now the annual report on "The Year in Hate" from the Southern Poverty Law Center has the numbers to back it up:

Hate groups stayed at record levels — almost 1,000 — despite the total collapse of the second largest neo-Nazi group in America. Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80%, adding some 136 new groups during 2009. And, most remarkably of all, so-called "Patriot" groups — militias and other organizations that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose “one-world government” on liberty-loving Americans — came roaring back after years out of the limelight.

The anger seething across the American political landscape — over racial changes in the population, soaring public debt and the terrible economy, the bailouts of bankers and other elites, and an array of initiatives by the relatively liberal Obama Administration that are seen as "socialist" or even "fascist" — goes beyond the radical right. The "tea parties" and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism.

“We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions in United States history,” Chip Berlet, a veteran analyst of the American radical right, wrote earlier this year. "We see around us a series of overlapping social and political movements populated by people [who are] angry, resentful, and full of anxiety. They are raging against the machinery of the federal bureaucracy and liberal government programs and policies including health care, reform of immigration and labor laws, abortion, and gay marriage."

Mark Potok, the author of the report, went on the Dylan Ratigan show yesterday on MSNBC to discuss it:

Ratigan: Mark, have you ever seen numbers like this?

Potok: Not in my tenure doing this work. I've been doing this close to 15 years, and I haven't seen anything like this.

I mean, the comparison, of course, is to the '90s, when we saw so much activity from militias and other anti-government 'Patriot' groups. And of course that's the sector of the radical right that we're really saying has exploded over the last year.

Uh, a minor correction to what you said -- the growth in hate groups, real race-based groups, 55 percent, has been over the last decade or so. That's slowed a bit. But when you look at the whole grouping of the various kinds of groups on the radical right -- extremist nativist groups, Patriot groups and hate groups -- it's astounding. We've seen an overall growth of something like 40 percent. All together, those three strands of the radical right are really the most volatile elements out there, and they amount to something like 1500 groups. It's quite amazing.

It's also worth noting what the report itself says about how this explosion has occurred:

As the movement has exploded, so has the reach of its ideas, aided and abetted by commentators and politicians in the ostensible mainstream. While in the 1990s, the movement got good reviews from a few lawmakers and talk-radio hosts, some of its central ideas today are being plugged by people with far larger audiences like FOX News’ Glenn Beck and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn). Beck, for instance, re-popularized a key Patriot conspiracy theory — the charge that FEMA is secretly running concentration camps — before finally “debunking” it.

Yep. As we've been saying ...

Here's Potok discussing the report in more detail:

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(h/t Heather for the video)

C&Lers know that I've had a history with the odious Mark Williams over the years. He once sent out an email claiming that we were trying to hurt his dog to drum up support for his failing radio show.

With no where to go he turned to the tea party movement and now is leading one of those buses that drives around screaming about death panels and calling Obama an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief' who is taking away our freedoms and whatnot. Dylan had him come on the air following Mark Potok of the SPLC, who issued a new extremism report that says hate groups have exploded in 2009. Dylan wanted to know from Williams why they tolerate hate groups becoming part of the tea party movement.

Mark, how do you draw the bright line between the very admirable and understandable principles that are advocated by so many....and the more radical views and hide if you will inside the tea party umbrella?

Williams: That's real simple. There's wingnuts and there's normal people...

Ratigan: It's not that simple...

{}

What confuses me about the tea party, is the tea parties willingness to accept the wingnuts as you put it

Williams: So it's our fault that they are nuts?

Ratigan: You have not shamed them Mark....Do you accept racists and Nazis in the tea parties?

Williams: Here at Sacramento...

Ratigan: I'm asking you a question my man, do you want to have a conversation or do you want to come on my TV show and do a commercial for yourself?

Ratigan walks off camera.

Williams: I'm answering the question. We have a women here from a local NBC affiliate who after an anti-Semitic rant at Sac State was promoted from reporter to anchor does that make NBC, does that make you an anti-Semitic?

Ratigan: Mark, do I run NBC? Are you a guest on my show? Do you have any intention of answering any of my questions because I don't want to continue to fool with this. You're wasting valuable oxygen. Can we please cut off this man's microphone, He has no interest in answering my questions, Mark a pleasure. Actually not really a pleasure. It was offensive, you're offensive. Your treatment of my show as a vehicle to spread your propaganda, ignore my questions, offensive and an indication of what is wrong with the dialogue in this country. Period. Not to mention that a group that would accept Nazis and racists.

The comedy started as soon as Williams tried to separate himself from wingnuts. Mark is never on to answer any question and Dylan got a taste of what an idiot this man is. Williams will never be able to justify the Radical-hate filled-Patriot-racist-right wing elements that make up the tea parties.

FOX News and movement conservatism reached out to the outer fringes of Planet Wingnuttia to build the tea party movement. Obviously not everyone is part of the Patriot movement that has joined in, but a large segment of these haters do inhabit there and have found a nice new home to be very open with their beliefs. They certainly carry enough signs around at their tea party events to let the world know what and who they are.

Ratigan gets mad props for dislodging Williams from his show. Yes, it's unfortunate that he gets asked to come on many cable news shows, but this is the best possible treatment. It's too bad that not enough Villagers take the few minutes to understand the teabaggers. They are merely an extension of the movement conservatives of the 80's only they didn't have a the media infrastructure that they do know.

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It's not news to regular C&L readers that militias are forming again in rural areas, a reality confirmed this summer by the SPLC.

It's deja vu all over again. And just as they did in the '90s, they're all insisting they really are just sincere patriots concerned about the looming tyranny of the federal government. And just as in the '90s, journalists are lapping it up.

The chief beneficiaries of this parachute-style journalism have been the reformed Michigan Militia, which was previously profiled by CNN in similarly heartwarming fashion.

Two reports this week on the Michigan Militia continued in this vein, though they at least contained some notes indicating that something darker is at work with militia organizing than the image the militiamen themselves want to cultivate -- that of ordinary citizens who are being civic-minded and patriotic.

Which is true. What's also true is that they're jacked up on large doses of paranoia about a "tyranny" that simply doesn't exist (particularly a fear that President Obama plans to take their guns away).

What's striking to me is how they sound just like the militiamen I met in the 1990s when they knew reporters were around (and, as we learned eventually, it was quite different from the way they talked among themselves in private). But even then, they sounded fairly extreme and marginal in their beliefs.

Now, they sound just like your average Tea Partier. Indeed, it's remarkable how much their rhetoric is echoes Glenn Beck.

One report, from Michigan NPR Radio, was reasonably careful in dealing with the subject:

It's a Wednesday night in February, and 22 men and one woman are gathered at Mayberry's Restaurant in Farmington Hills. They're all Caucasian. Some are middle-aged, out of shape; others are in their twenties, and fit.

This is the militia's monthly business meeting. It's also recruitment night.

You also get the feeling that the militiamen are overhyping the success of their recruitment efforts:

Only one potential new member shows up at the meeting. Jeff is in his early thirties, he has a wife and a new baby. He's deeply distrustful of the government and he believes something is to about happen, probably the collapse of the American economy.

"Well, I feel like I can't rely on our elected officials, I can't rely on our military who works for our government, so bottom line is we have to have somebody to rely on," he says.

This is fairly typical of the paranoia that was common to the '90s militias as well. Of course, if you watch Glenn Beck regularly and believe the garbage he peddles, then you're probably going to be in a similar state of mind.

They're also fearful about their guns, still:

Protecting the Second Amendment is the primary reason for the militia's existence.

Jeff is 42. He's a rifle team leader. He believes the current administration is sneaking around the back door to take his guns away, and he wants the right to protect his family during an emergency

"Okay, I've got this food, I've got this water," he says. "I need to be able to defend that from people that don't. In a time of need, a couple of weeks without food and water and gasoline, people are going to be hungry. And they're going to do desperate things to do whatever they can to feed their families."

Right. Sounds a lot like that scenario

Beck's guest offered just the other day.

The second piece on the Michiganders was from WWMT-TV, and it contained largely more of the same.

In it, militia leader Lee Miracle does offer a novel reason why it's unfair to connect the militias to Tim McVeigh:

“Let's say after the Oklahoma City bombing they said Timothy McVeigh, a known bread eater, blew up a building. Now when you go the store and buy some bread they're going to say, 'Oh he's eating bread just like Timothy McVeigh,'” said Miracle.

Well, if there were something in bread that made a person a person believe in conspiracy theories and various "facts" about incipient government tyranny that eventually will enslave all Americans, then this might be an accurate analogy. Because all that is true of the militias, and has a powerful causal connections to the motives of people like McVeigh when they set off bombs and commit terrorist acts. It is not, however, true of bread.

Which is why one can't help be darkly amused when the WWMT reporter asks Miracle if there's any chance he could suddenly become a violent terrorist with a gun. His answer:

“No, I'm a postal worker."

Somehow, that's less than assuring.