Andrea March, the ex-fiance of the leader of the Hutaree militia group, spoke with Shepard Smith and said that David Brian Stone was a Ron Paul fanatic who was afraid that Obama would take away his guns. Where have we heard that one before? Oh, it reminds me of the Richard Poplawski saga. (rough transcript)

Marsh: When Obama took the presidency is when he lost it because he was a Ron Paul fanatic.

Smith: Ron Paul fanatic, what does that have to do with ?

Marsh: To tell you the truth I don't know. I never really understood why Ron Paul was so much different, but he thought he could get away with anything and he wanted more freedoms than what he had and he was trying to do it through the violence.

Smith: Do you know what was his particular concern was with the current government? Was he worried they would take his guns away?

Marsh: Well yes, he clearly believed in guns and having them and he didn't think . He didn't want to have a driver's licence, he didn't want to fill out any census papers

Smith: Oh.

Marsh: He wanted to own guns unregistered....

--

And he is said to have believed that anti-Christ was on the way and he wanted to do something about that?

Yes, he explained to us that through the bible the world was going to end in war and Christ wanted us to do this. Now he couldn't prove that to anyone, but the kids always listened to him.

Ron Paul's brand of anti-government rhetoric influenced Stone greatly which also fed into his 'End Timer' philosophy. And in this case, Obama was the anti-Christ.

These outbreaks of violent right-wing "cells" within our country will only increase, unfortunately. We can only hope that the feds and local law enforcement keep up the great work, or people will really get hurt.

U.S. House Majority LeaderTom DeLay's visit to Reliant Park thismorning offered him a glimpse of what it's like to be living inshelter.The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked,"Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"

Other fun activities Tom Delay should try. *starving, *freezing,*drowning, *crying,*toxic burning, *sexually assualted, *beinghomeless, * looking for lost family members...

CORRECTING THE RECORD ON VALERIE PLAME

Larry C. Johnson, a republican former CIA agent writes this piece to Congress to try and spread some truth about Valeri and combat the gang of bullies that is being directed by the Republican National Committee. "We must put to bed the lie that she was not undercover. For starters, if she had not been undercover then the CIA would not have referred the matter to the Justice Department.

Some reports, such as one in the Washington Times that Valerie Plame's supervisor at the CIA, Fred Rustman, said she told friends and family she worked at the CIA and that her cover was light. These claims are not true. Rustman, who supervised Val in one of her earliest assignments, left the CIA in 1990 and did not stay in social contact with Valerie. His knowledge of Val's cover is dated. He does not know what she has done during the past 15 years...read on"

Listening to the RNC smear Valeri in an effort to save their own is despicable. Do you think any of the former agents would step forward to defend Valeri because of a political agenda when they are all Republicans? I think they have a better understanding of what constitutes a NOC and her status in the CIA instead of cowards like John Gibson.

Smearing Patriots Altercation

There aren't enough hours in the day to keep up with all the theories and counter-theories, plus the spin and propaganda being thrown out in the hopes of deflecting attention from the actions of the Rove/Novak diabolic duo. One thing worth keeping in mind is the quality of the people they are seeking to smear. Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame were both life-long public servants. Wilson, whom the right is seeking to smear as a partisan-minded Democrat—not that he wouldn’t have the right to be if he chose—contributed to the presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, and took many hazardous and unpleasant duties on behalf of his country. When the CIA sent him to Niger, he knew that the politically smart—and self-promotional course to take would be to hew to the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Perle line without gumming up the system. Instead he told the truth and they came after him.
Valerie Plame, meanwhile, lived her entire life under cover—no small or easy thing—in the service of her country. (How many journalists and Republican pols or consultants can say the same?) And for her trouble, she has seen her cover revealed and both herself and her husband smeared across the land. Her former colleague, Larry Johnson, writing in TPM Café, tells you what kind of person and patriot she was, here.
Can you spell “desperate?”  They are now even spreading rumors, believe it or not, that Wilson was the source who blew his wife’s cover, if you can believe that.  Also, the Rove camp's claim that Matt Cooper "burned" his source is nonsensical.  Boy are these guys grasping at straws.
Meanwhile, Murray Wass reports here that “Fitzgerald is looking seriously at conspiracy or obstruction charges against Rove et al. and perhaps even Novak himself.”  Read the whole thing.

How We'll Know                     Rain Storm

Since Donald Rumsfeld has never been able to come up with a way to measure whether or not we are winning the global war on terror (GWOT), one of my fellow army veteran's is willing to suggest one:Can you spell “desperate?” They are now even spreading rumors, believe it or not, that Wilson was the source who blew his wife’s cover, if you can believe that. Also, the Rove camp's claim that Matt Cooper "burned" his source is nonsensical. Boy are these guys grasping at straws.
Meanwhile, Murray Wass reports here that “Fitzgerald is looking seriously at conspiracy or obstruction charges against Rove et al. and perhaps even Novak himself.” Read the whole thing.

DOWNING STREET: WAKE ME WHEN THE LIBERATION IS OVER

via The Heretik: When Will We Wake Up from the Nightmare? Our past revealed true in the Downing Street Memos leaves us yet ruled by still present false prophets who speak of last throes like Cheney. Wake me when the liberation is over, for real work must then be done.

We all could profit from some truth about the future seen by only honest eyes. Where can they be found? Our national scribes, royal court stenographers all, tell us the Downing Street Memo past they forgot to write about in its present time, when lies were boldly told and dutifully written down, is something best cowardly forgotten. Wake me when the liberation is over, when I may wake from the sleep where truth and reporters are embedded with lies and power... read on

Peace can only begin with the telling of the truth. And now, thirty-eight years later, the truth is finally out:

LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland – Relatives of 13 Catholic demonstrators shot to death by British troops on Northern Ireland's Bloody Sunday cried tears of joy Tuesday as an epic fact-finding probe ruled that their loved ones were innocent and the soldiers entirely to blame for the 1972 slaughter.

The investigation took 12 years and nearly 200 million pounds ($290 million), but the victims' families and the British, Irish and U.S. governments welcomed the findings as priceless to heal one of the gaping wounds left from Northern Ireland's four-decade conflict that left 3,700 dead.

Thousands of residents of LondonDerry — a predominantly Catholic city long synonymous with Britain's major mass killing from the Northern Ireland conflict — gathered outside the city hall to watch the verdict come in, followed by a lengthy apology from Prime Minister David Cameron in London that moved many locals long distrustful of British leaders.

The probe found that soldiers opened fire without justification at unarmed, fleeing civilians and lied about it for decades, refuting an initial British investigation that branded the demonstrators as Irish Republican Army bombers and gunmen.
Cameron, who was just 5 years old when the attack occurred, said it was "both unjustified and unjustifiable."

"I couldn't believe it, I was so overjoyed," said Kay Duddy, clutching the handkerchief used to swab blood from her 17-year-old brother's body that day. Jackie Duddy, the first of the 13 killed, was shot in the back.

"Never in my wildest dreams would I ever envisage a British prime minister would stand up in Parliament and tell the truth of what happened on Bloody Sunday," Duddy said. "David Cameron told the world and its mother that Jackie Duddy and the rest of the deceased and injured were innocent people. They were totally exonerated today," she said.

Continue reading »

Howard Dean is Doing What Dems Need: Shaking Things Up

via Atrios via TPM: ..."The Republican Party took weeks to finally admit that it was responsible for some of the most outrageous campaign flyers in the last election. The Washington Note was the first to post these -- and Howard Dean, on his blog, was one of the few politicians (then withdrawn from the race) to roundly attack these flyers that said Democrats would BAN the Bible and turn that respective state (Arkansas, West Virginia, Ohio, and several others) into bastions of homosexuality. And now Dean is being clobbered by his own party for asserting that the Republican Party is mostly Christian, mostly white, and mostly male?! ..read on"

Only in politics can you tell the truth and get hammered. Do I think he needs to be a bit more precise. Yes. Also, the more they attack what Dean says the less effect it will have. 24/7 is devoting segment after segment on Howard Dean. After awhile the producers will grow tired of it as well the people they are trying to influence, and the only entertained members will be the rabid fundamentalists.

I agree with Karl Rove The Next Left

Whoa. This is kind of scary. At a forum on the press at a college in Maryland, Karl Rove said of the press, "I think it's less liberal than it is oppositional."

"Reporters now see their role less as discovering facts and fair-mindedly reporting the truth and more as being put on the earth to afflict the comfortable, to be a constant thorn of those in power, whether they are Republican or Democrat," Rove said.
His indictment of the media -- delivered as part of Washington College's Harwood Lecture Series, named for the late Washington Post editor and writer Richard Harwood -- had four parts: that there's been an explosion in the number of media outlets; that these outlets have an insatiable demand for content; that these changes create enormous competitive pressure; and that journalists have increasingly adopted an antagonistic attitude toward public officials. Beyond that, Rove argued that the press pays too much attention to polls and "horse-race" politics, and covers governing as if it were a campaign.

I would not, however, say journalists are increasingly antagonistic towards anything. The "horse-race" coverage of politics, is decidedly un-antagonistic. During the election coverage this year, NPR and the NYT, the outlets from which I get most of my news, were just spin machines: "Kerry said this. Bush said this. Blah blah blah."
Nevertheless, I gotta give Rove credit for actually being honest about the media, instead of taking the standard Republican line.

Via Washington Post

Whoa. This is kind of scary. At a forum on the press at a college in Maryland, Karl Rove said of the press, "I think it's less liberal than it is oppositional."

"Reporters now see their role less as discovering facts and fair-mindedly reporting the truth and more as being put on the earth to afflict the comfortable, to be a constant thorn of those in power, whether they are Republican or Democrat," Rove said.
His indictment of the media -- delivered as part of Washington College's Harwood Lecture Series, named for the late Washington Post editor and writer Richard Harwood -- had four parts: that there's been an explosion in the number of media outlets; that these outlets have an insatiable demand for content; that these changes create enormous competitive pressure; and that journalists have increasingly adopted an antagonistic attitude toward public officials. Beyond that, Rove argued that the press pays too much attention to polls and "horse-race" politics, and covers governing as if it were a campaign.

I would not, however, say journalists are increasingly antagonistic towards anything. The "horse-race" coverage of politics, is decidedly un-antagonistic. During the election coverage this year, NPR and the NYT, the outlets from which I get most of my news, were just spin machines: "Kerry said this. Bush said this. Blah blah blah."
Nevertheless, I gotta give Rove credit for actually being honest about the media, instead of taking the standard Republican line.

Via Washington Post

This is starting to look like a pattern. First Mark Kirk, now Jan Brewer. Governor Brewer's effort to stir sympathy for her cause seems to have backfired on her.

Via the Arizona Guardian:

Gov. Jan Brewer said in a recent interview that her father died fighting Nazis in Germany. In fact, the death of Wilford Drinkwine came 10 years after World War II had ended.

During the war, Drinkwine worked as a civilian supervisor for a naval munitions depot in Hawthorne, Nev. He died of lung disease in 1955 in California.

Brewer made the comment to The Arizona Republic while talking about the criticism she has taken since signing SB 1070, the new immigration law that makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally.

"Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that... and then to have them call me Hitler's daughter. It hurts. It's ugliness beyond anything I've ever experienced," Brewer said in the story, published Tuesday.

How exactly does one stretch work for a munitions depot stateside into "fighting the Nazis"? Evidently by making the claim that the lung disease that killed her father was caused by toxic fumes at the munitions factory.

Her claim that she didn't mean to embellish the story rings hollow to me. The phrase "my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany..." clearly intends to convey the impression that he fell in combat in Germany fighting Nazis. If she had intended to convey otherwise, she would have framed it as the result of the country's war with Nazi Germany. She did not.

Of course, she is now trying to spin as a simple misinterpretation on the part of the reader, which points directly to my overall problem with the faux patriotism candidates put on under the guise of military service. We live in a country where service is voluntary (despite our unenforced draft laws). Serving or not serving is not a benchmark measure of anyone's patriotism.

As far as I'm concerned, military service should not be a marker of a candidate's qualification to run for or hold office. When it starts being pimped as some kind of extra qualifier, or when candidates use their family's service as a qualifier (as Brewer did), it's an insult to every member who is or has served in the military today.

Brewer just keeps proving her ambition and lack of qualification for office. Arizona, you can do better than this.

Jeff/Jim does the Today Show

via AmericaBlog

Jeff/Jim really is becoming a media whore, too.

This morning, Campbell Brown did a taped piece featuring an interview with Gannon/Guckert. She did a pretty good job. After he gave the lame excuse about changing his name, she told him the name isn't that hard to say.

Brown asked him about his hooker past, which he wouldn't answer. He did say there was some truth and a lot of falsehood about him.

It was more of the same from him. He sure intimated he was consulting an attorney and there was more to come.

Campbell concluded by mentioning that Dems were calling for investigations. The way she did her segment sure made it clear they were needed.

After the piece, Matt Lauer said this was a bizarre yet fascinating story.

Yes, Matt, it is. And it is about time that the MSM really started paying attention.