It was only a matter of time, I suppose, before the wingnuts tried to maliciously and deceitfully connect the Fort Hood shooter to the Obama White House. We just didn't expect it would take less than 24 hours.

And of course the perpetrator is the reliably wrong conspiracy-meister Jerome Corsi, writing at WorldNetDaily:

NEW YORK – Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter in yesterday's massacre at Fort Hood, played a homeland security advisory role in President Barack Obama's transition into the White House, according to a key university policy institute document.

The Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University published a document May 19, entitled "Thinking Anew – Security Priorities for the Next Administration: Proceedings Report of the HSPI Presidential Transition Task Force, April 2008 – January 2009," in which Hasan of the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine is listed on page 29 of the document as a Task Force Event Participant.

Media Matters has the facts:

However, Corsi himself acknowledges that there is no evidence that "the group played any formal role in the official Obama transition" -- indeed, the Task Force was initiated in April 2008. Moreover, while Hasan was listed as one of approximately 300 "Task Force Event Participants" in the report's appendix, HSPI has reportedly said he was not a "member" of the Task Force, and was listed because he RSVP'd for several of the group's open events.

Why, we can hardly wait for the next Glenn Beck episode.

The fact that it is crap, of course, guarantees that Glenn Beck et al will run with it. We can now look forward to a “the Fort Hood killer advised the Obama transition team” meme -– shortened to calling him “an Obama adviser”.

This is, naturally, just par for the course for Corsi:

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Sean Hannity hosted not one but two whole segments last night devoted promoting the new book by Jerome Corsi -- godfather of the Swift-Boating of John Kerry -- titled America For Sale, which is basically an extended black-helicopter-style conspiracy tome straight out of the Patriot movement of the 1990s, updated for the new century.

This is a classic case of conservatives mainstreaming extremist ideas. I haven't read all of Corsi's book yet, but it differs very little in ideas and content and overall thesis from the kinds of books you could buy at militia-meeting tables in the '90s.

I haven't yet found whether Corsi decided to include his recent reportage for WorldNetDaily detailing the nefarious Obama conspiracy to round up conservatives and imprison them in concentration camps. Hannity managed to not bring up that point last night.

But yes, that's what Corsi wrote:

Text:

The proposed bill, which has received little mainstream media attention, appears designed to create the type of detention center that those concerned about use of the military in domestic affairs fear could be used as concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany.

Funny, I still have a Militia of Montana book that outlines this very same nefarious plot being concocted by Bill Clinton.

As Steven Thomma explained for McClatchy:

In truth, Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., has proposed a bill that would order the Homeland Security Department to prepare national emergency centers — to provide temporary housing and medical facilities in national emergencies such as hurricanes. The bill also would allow the centers to be used to train first responders, and for "other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security."

Of course, Corsi and Hannity aren't the only ostensibly mainstream conservatives peddling this paranoiac fearmongering: So is Michelle Bachmann, among others:

"There is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service," Bachmann told a Minnesota radio station.

"And the real concern is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums."

It's also cropping up quite a bit at Tea Party gatherings. That's where you find outfits like the "Oath Keepers," whose organization is built around resisting citizen roundups.

Why, exactly, does Sean Hannity so avidly promote Jerome Corsi and his conspiracy theories anyway? Look at his record:

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Lou Dobbs has gone and done it again:

On his radio show -- broadcast from the anti-immigration organization Federation for American Immigration Reform's "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" legislative advocacy event -- Lou Dobbs interviewed WorldNetDaily staff reporter Jerome Corsi, who Dobbs described as "a pretty good guy to talk to" about immigration issues. Corsi is a consistent promoter of the conspiracy theory -- previously advanced by Dobbs -- that President Obama has yet to produce a valid birth certificate; the author of falsehood-laden books about Obama and Sen. John Kerry that Dobbs' CNN colleagues panned as "discredited;" and has a history of making bigoted comments, some of which he later apologized for.

The piece documents Corsi's long history of promoting conspiracy theories, including most recently the "birther" nonsense, but more famously the "Swift Boat" garbage that sank John Kerry's candidacy.

Perhaps even more germane is that, beyond the "birther" conspiracy theories, Corsi has most recently been promoting the theory that President Obama is planning to round up conservatives and put them in concentration camps.

This willingness to abet the most insane wingnuttery is yet another drop in the bucket of evidence that CNN needs to give Dobbs the boot if it ever hopes to salvage what little credibility it has left.

A new site called DropDobbs.com is a joint effort by various progressive organizations -- including Media Matters, America's Voice, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the National Council of La Raza -- to demand CNN make the change:

Over the years, Lou Dobbs has consistently used his CNN platform to spread hatred and fear. He played a critical role in skewing the immigration reform debate in 2006, leading to the derailment of that effort, and his obsession with the issue of immigration and with defeating immigration reform continues unabated. Adding to his repertoire of hate and fearmongering, he has recently aligned himself with the “birther” conspiracists and their racially tinged attack on the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency. From his CNN platform, he has bolstered the claims of those on the fringe by asserting repeatedly that President Obama has failed to produce adequate proof that he was born in the United States. His recent focus on the birth certificate conspiracy issue has reinforced what immigration reform proponents have long known — that Dobbs has a long history of the worst kind of pandering by promoting hate and ethnic and racial division.

Timothy Karr at HuffPo has a thoughtful piece on what we can start to do to confront the flood of toxic garbage that is spewing out of right-wing media these days. Lou Dobbs is only one of the most prominent problems.

Digby discusses the Corsi book and how the press reacts to it:

Rutten says this is all about making money, and I don't disagree that there's probably some money to be made by the wingnut welfare recipients in the food chain. But money isn't the motive of the people who buy those books in bulk. They are making an investment in Republican politics. And the most telling thing about it is that one of the most mainstream Republican figures in the country -- so mainstream that she regularly appears with her Democratic operative husband on Meet the Press with their two daughters at Christmas time --- is giving her imprimatur to a book written by a known delusional, right wing racist. On that side of the dial the separation between the mainstream and the violent fringe isn't even one degree. 

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As long as the villagers are in agreement that the only people who are truly beyond the pale in American politics are on the left, then this will continue. Mary Matalin will still be considered a perfectly respectable person by both the "right" and the "left" (as if there's any discernible difference among the cognoscenti) and there will be no professional or social repercussions. Meanwhile even staid, old organizations like the ACLU suffer from the myth of being some sort of far left fringe organization and Democratic politicians run for cover when the right wing publicly "tars" them with guilt by association.

This is an ongoing problem that we see being played out once again in a national election. And I don't think the progressive movement has fully come to grips yet with just how powerful this image of scary left wing freaks still is in the national imagination --- or how thoroughly the right's extremist views have been accepted by the political establishment. It's something...read on.

Via The Next Right on Jerome Corsi:

The French Revolution produced the saying "no enemies to the Left" - a mindset that has poisoned both the Left and the Right in American politics. As a result, some figures who should be repudiated have, instead, become prominent representatives. On the Right, in particular, the "go along to get along" approach has created a Movement where the bad guys are protected, and the people who get promoted are those who make friends, not waves.

It's wrong, and it needs to stop. So, with that said...

The continued tolerance and prominence of Jerome Corsi - his books, columns and appearances - is just embarrassing. It is embarrassing for the Right, embarrassing for Republicans, embarrassing for conservatives and libertarians, embarrassing for all of us.

It's not just that he's frequently, remarkably wrong - something pretty well documented and acknowledged by both the Left and (while less enthusiastically) the Right.  (and the Obama campaign (PDF), of course)  Both the Obama campaign and Hugh Hewitt acknowledge that Jerome Corsi is "fringe".

Bad as his gross errors are, though, it's not just that.  It's also about who Jerome Corsi is...read on

(h/t Matt Stoller)

  John Kerry swiftboater Jerome Corsi is at it again. After writing a book back in 2004 which sought to sink John Kerry's Presidential hopes by calling into question his heroic Vietnam service, Corsi has now set hs sights on Barack Obama. With all the secret-Muslim/unpatriotic/radical-black-liberation-theologist smears already circulating, you might think his job would be easier this time around.Well, if every news outlet is as "fair and balanced" as CNN was last night in covering the book, Corsi and his ilk might be in a bit of trouble. Watch while MediaMatters' Paul Waldman, author of the book Free Ride: John McCain and the Media, dismantles every single one of Corsi's lies in rather humiliating fashion. In this clip,Corsi gets slammed for claiming "700 footnotes" while refusing to acknowledge that one of his sources is a widely discredited anti-semitic right-wing blogger.

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WALDMAN: He talks about how many footnotes he has and how many sources he has. Well, if you actually look at them, there are dozens and dozens of citations to right-wing Web sites and blogs. One of the people that he cites as a quote/unquote source is a man named Andy Martin, who is an anti- Semitic right-wing blogger who once called a judge a dirty Jew and filed so many frivolous lawsuits that he's now no longer allowed to file lawsuits.

So my question to Mr. Corsi is, since you cite Andy Martin multiple times as a source, are there any other anti-Semitic right- wing bloggers that you also use as sources or is he the only one?

CORSI: All right. This is what Media Matters does. They frame questions that you...

WALDMAN: This is what we do. We look at what you wrote.

CORSI: [...] If you'd like to talk, I can just sit here. The book has close to 700 footnotes in it. The footnotes are of primary sources. There must be 100 books cited in that. I did interviews. The interviews are cited. There's newspapers included...

KING: Well, respond to the question about Mr. Martin.

CORSI: Well, I quote -- I can remember one quip I quote from him -- and it's just a quip, which is -- where he basically is saying if Obama will lie about his background and his family, he'll lie about anything. And this was in reference to the way Obama presents his father in the autobiography, which I write about extension extensively."

MediaMatters has the entire segment here as well as a thorough debunking of Corsi's book here.

The Dems have an email campaign going called: Get the Truth Out About Jerome Corsi. Please sign up and help us to expose this fraud.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign has released an exhaustive 41 page rebuttal to "fringe bigot" Corsi titled "Unfit for Publication." Read it and learn it here.

Full transcript below the fold. 

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