Whoever shot Texas District Attorney Mike McClelland and his wife Cynthia wanted to make sure they were dead.

According to NBC News, McClelland was shot at 20 times. It is unclear whether or not he was hit with that number of bullets. The reports did note that they recovered shell casings from a weapon using .223 caliber ammunition, which just happens to be the same type of ammunition used in AR-15 assault-style weapons. While it's not unique to AR-15s, the number of bullets shot at McClelland could indicate that such a rapid-fire weapon was used.

A Texas district attorney was shot at 20 times and his wife, Cynthia, was shot once when they were gunned down in their home on Saturday, a federal source with knowledge of the investigation told NBC News.

The source didn't say exactly how many times the man was hit. An earlier affidavit in the case said both of the victims sustained multiple gunshot wounds. The reason for the discrepancy was unclear.

The slayings of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife have rocked the the small town of Kaufman on the eastern outskirts of Dallas.

The brazen attack on the justice official comes weeks after Colorado's prison director, Tom Clements, was shot to death at his home, with a paroled white supremacist ex-con killed in a Texas shootout the main suspect.

The Star-Telegram has published the full affidavit (PDF), which includes requests for a cell phone records dump for the period beginning January 1, 2013 and ending March 31, 2013.

Even though police are not making public statements connecting white supremacist gang prosecutions with the assassination of Assistant DA Haase and DA McClellan, the federal prosecutor in charge of the Texas racketeering case pending against the Aryan Brotherhood has withdrawn, citing security concerns.

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Oh, Tea Party Patriots. How many times must you be reminded that you are, for the most part, irrelevant? Make all the scary movie trailers you want to fire up the last vestiges of paranoid Americans, but rest assured the only ones it resonates with are paranoid right wing Americans.

RJ Eskow picked up on this little gem of a movie trailer which was, according to him, a hit at CPAC. Somehow I am not surprised. Here is RJ's short summary of the movie they're promoting:

These films portrayed centralized government as Evil incarnate. Their scriptural source was the Book of Revelations, whose cryptic, evocative prophecies have fascinated and frightened believers for millennia. The same message resonates in “Movement On Fire,” which opens with a young woman staring across a river toward a city. “It was created to give us freedom,” she says in a voiceover as a torch burns beside her. “Our city became a great beacon of liberty and hope to the world.” The wind lightly ruffles her hair. “It was a shining city on a hill,” she adds, quoting the phrase that passed from the Bible to Puritan minister John Winthrop before winding up in Ronald Reagan’s 1976 concession speech.

“But 15 years ago,” says the narrator, “something happened.” Shadowy hooded figures creep up behind her. “Freedom died.” In a shot that moves so quickly we barely see it, one of the figures covers her eyes.

News anchors report on the rise of the “Development Party,” which took control of the city after winning control of its “Senate.” (Hmmm. Cities don’t have “Senates.” Who could they be talking about?) We see a gray-haired man with large, black, nearly pupil-less eyes. “All must contribute,” the dead-eyed “Troy Marcus” intones, “because from each, everything shall be given to all.”

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The next time a politician starts talking about "shared sacrifice" and "skin in the game," send them this Alternet article that puts that horse hockey in perspective:

1. Only THREE PERCENT of the very rich are entrepreneurs.

According to both Marketwatch and economist Edward Wolff, over 90 percent of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), personal business accounts, the stock market, and real estate. Only 3.6 percent of taxpayers in the top .1% were classified as entrepreneurs based on 2004 tax returns. A 2009 Kauffman Foundation study found that the great majority of entrepreneurs come from middle-class backgrounds, with less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs coming from very rich or very poor backgrounds.

2. Only FOUR OUT OF 150 countries have more wealth inequality than us.

In a world listing compiled by a reputable research team (which nevertheless prompted double-checking), the U.S. has greater wealth inequality than every measured country in the world except for Namibia, Zimbabwe, Denmark, and Switzerland.

3. An amount equal to ONE-HALF the GDP is held untaxed overseas by rich Americans.

The Tax Justice Network estimated that between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden offshore, untaxed. With Americans making up 40% of the world's Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, that's $8 to $12 trillion in U.S. money stashed in far-off hiding places.

Based on a historical stock market return of 6%, up to $750 billion of income is lost to the U.S. every year, resulting in a tax loss of about $260 billion.

4. Corporations stopped paying HALF OF THEIR TAXES after the recession.

After paying an average of 22.5% from 1987 to 2008, corporations have paid an annual rate of 10% since. This represents a sudden $250 billion annual loss in taxes.

U.S. corporations have shown a pattern of tax reluctance for more than 50 years, despite building their businesses with American research and infrastructure. They've passed the responsibility on to their workers. For every dollar of workers' payroll tax paid in the 1950s, corporations paid three dollars. Now it's 22 cents.

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So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

The title of her Guardian article was "The Shocking Truth about the crackdown on Occupy". I note the use of the term "truth" in the title, and point back to her conclusion, which one might be led to believe is the "truth" as Naomi Wolf sees it, at least. What Wolf sees isn't something to ignore. She contends, after connecting her set of dots, that the United States Government in the person of the DHS is colluding with Congress and has been blessed by the President of the United States with the mission to wage violent civil war on citizens.

This was her "shocking truth." As I, Joshua Holland at AlterNet and many others pointed out, the only shocking thing about it was how utterly untrue that "truth" is.

Wolf has written a 5,300 word rebuttal to Holland's original debunking of her "truth" for Alternet. While she addresses specific allegations about sources and the like, she fails in any way to defend her central "truth"; that is, that there is a covert, bloody and intentional civil war being waged on ordinary citizens exercising their rights. In fact, by ignoring it, she affirms that her truth was no truth at all.

Originally, Wolf relied upon the Examiner.com article written by Rick Ellis (as cited by Wonkette and WashingtonsBlog.com), which alluded to DHS coordination but was subsequently updated to clarify that the DHS was involved in Portland, where protesters were on Federal land. She writes:

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AlterNet and The Nation Institute's Investigative Fund teamed up to put together this fabulous report on Tea Party, Inc. Click here for the larger size -- this picture is worth about 10,000 words, but the report is well worth the read, too.

Win or lose, the Tea Party movement will come away from next week's elections triumphant, having injected into the Republican Party a group of candidates pledged to the dismantling of government and wed to the religious right. Of the movement's dozen favored candidates for U.S. Senate, all are anti-abortion, and five oppose it even in cases of rape and incest. Among their number are Colorado's Ken Buck, who has compared homosexuality to alcoholism, and Nevada's Sharron Angle, who wants to demolish both the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency. Major GOP players, from political strategist Karl Rove to former Bush speechwriter David Frum, have fretted publicly over Tea Party extremism, with Frum complaining of the movement's "paranoid delusions."

The clip below illustrates just how irrational their views are, and how unwilling they are to actually stand behind them when challenged.

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The Sideshow: Something old, something new

Lawyers, Guns & Money: To know is to hate?

Wonk Room: Mitchell reaffirms 'linkage' in remarks on direct talks

AlterNet: Dylan Ratigan's Crusade

field negro: "Your glasses or your life"

Dennis Perrin: In Gawd's Image

John and I have been wandering the halls at Netroots Nation here in Vegas this week, having a blast hanging out with our blogospheric friends. But we also led one of the conference's first panels yesterday morning, titled "Right Wing Populism and the Tea Parties".

It also featured our friend Adele Stan of AlterNet and the amazing Hugh Jackson of the Las Vegas Gleaner. Of course, I'm a little biased, but I thought the ensuing discussion was very good, the room was pretty full and the questions very thoughtful.

Turns out that some folks from rightward publications were there too. Susan Davis of the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire was there and filed a pretty balanced story.

However, I noticed that she also truncated not only the title of our book, Over the Cliff -- she omitted the subtitle, How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane, though that in fact was a significant theme of the panel as well -- she also truncated the quote from me as well:

“After the 2008 election we were all celebrating, but we also became complacent,” said liberal blogger David Neiwert. “The right never gives up.”

“The answer to the tea party is to activate the populist wing of the progressive movement,” he said. “We need to seize on [the public’s frustration] ourselves and channel it to our movement.”

What I actually said in full was this:

"After the 2008 election we were all celebrating, but we also became complacent. But having studied the right for many years, I can tell you: They never, ever, give up. They are relentless. Even after their ideology has been completely discredited by eight years of conservative rule, even after they have driven the country into an economic abyss, they keep going -- even if it means going insane in the process."

Oh well.

And then there was Chris Moody of the Daily Caller, who couldn't take the time to talk to any of us afterward, and wrote an even more distorted account headlined "Liberals warn: Don’t write off the Tea Party (even if they’re crazy)".

You'll note, if you read the piece, that Moody omits my explanation for why we call the Right "insane," namely this, which I said:

"We say that they've gone insane a little bit facetiously, but really, we say it because they believe things -- lots of things -- that are provably untrue. And that really is a kind of insanity. It's why we sometimes just say these people are nuts."

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This is a stunning example of why you want separation of church and state, no matter how silly it may seem at times. Because once you let that line blur, you eventually end up with people who want to make the military into a "weapon for Christ." Mikey Weinstein is the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and is fighting against the insidious religious pressure placed on our troops:

Mikey talks about Christian supremacists like they're vampires, demons determined to drain secularism and pluralism out of the military. That realization turned what was once a personal fight against anti-Semitism into a more lofty principle. "Wherever I see unconstitutional religious predators in the U.S. military, of any stripe, I don't care if I live or die. Someone's gonna get a beating and we're going to do it," he says. "The two ways to administer the beating is to go into the media or into court," he explains, a strategy distilled from his fight at the Academy. Lance Benzel, a journalist for Colorado Spring's The Gazette, recently summarized Mikey's civil rights agitation aptly: "Condemn in the strongest language possible. Publicly embarrass. Sue if necessary. Each new step raises the pressure on his publicity-averse targets." What the U.S. military has realized over the years is that the mosquito they swatted at didn't only have bite, it had malaria.

Some Christians, out of ignorance or sincere apocalyptic belief, believe Mikey is the anti-Christ. (He's actually a reluctant agnostic.) Google "Mikey Weinstein" and you'll see descriptions like "Jesus-basher," "AntiChrist," and "anti-Christian Jewish supremacist." One "Concerned American" on the website "Powered by Christ" argued Weinstein's "doing all he can to create an anti-Jewish backlash and help bring about the predicted endtime Holocaust of Jews that'll be worse than Hitler's."

There's one problem with this assumption. Ninety-six percent of MRFF's 18,300 military clients are Christians -- many Roman Catholics and mainline Protestant -- that have been treated by their more spirit-filled comrades and commanders as not Christian enough. "This is not a Christian-Jewish issue," Mikey argues, "it's a constitutional right and wrong issue, and Christian fundamentalism does not recognize the supremacy of the Constitution over its sectarian theocratic dictates."

[...] MRFF receives multitudes of thank you's from veterans and service members serving across the globe. One thank you came from a U.S. Navy veteran, a self described "religious Jew," who described extreme religious coercion during hospital stays at the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Medical Center in 2007. "During two hospitalizations, despite my written and verbal instructions to the contrary, the hospital staff was not content to just refuse to contact my rabbi," wrote Akiva David Miller, now the director veterans affairs for MRFF, "they sent a proselytizing Protestant chaplain in to see me -- while I was bedridden and wired to a heart monitor -- to tell me that Jesus was the Messiah of the Jews too, and that my only hope was salvation through Jesus Christ."

Miller and his rabbi protested and the medical center retaliated by discontinuing Miller's care. When they cut of his pain medication, Miller asked his doctor why. He response: "You're a religious Jew. Why don't you try prayer or meditation?" Miller contacted MRFF. Mikey flew out to Des Moines and held a press conference that launched a full investigation that confirmed Miller's discrimination. And with the help of his old boss Ross Perot, Mikey got Miller care at the Dallas V.A. Medical Center.

There was big celebration this past weekend in Palm Beach, Florida. Mr. Oxycontin and Dominican Republic Viagra Rush Limbaugh, 59, got married for the fourth time to the former Kathryn Rogers, 33. Aside from the poor track record on the matrimonial front (there's your conservative family values for you), the 26-year age difference (Hmmm...why does this song keep coming to mind?) and his proclivity for sex vacations to Third World nations, what's really disgusting was his choice of wedding entertainment: Rushbo hired Elton John to serenade his new bride.

That's right, one of the most vocal opponents to same-sex marriage was successful in buying off one of the most highly visible openly gay MARRIED entertainers in the world. Apparently $1 million dollars is the price tag to sell your pride, soul and dignity to entertain those who think you're a lesser being.

This is who you sold out to, Elton.

And that's not the first time that Elton has shown a love for money to trump principles.

Two politicians who have consistently voted against gay rights, Reps. John Shimkus (R-IL) and Jean Schmidt (R-OH), will be holding fundraisers at the Elton John/Billy Joel Face2Face concert in Washington DC's Nationals Park July 11, reports PartyBlog.

And Prop 8 supporters were only too happy to quote John in his less than supportive words for gay marriage:

Despite campaigning for global gay rights, Elton John is very not supportive of civil marriage equality. Or maybe he just doesn't understand that civil unions do not allow couples in the U.S. over 1,300 rights granted to heterosexual married couples. In November 2008, Sir Elton told USA Today:

We're not married. Let's get that right. We have a civil partnership. What is wrong with Proposition 8 is that they went for marriage. Marriage is going to put a lot of people off, the word marriage...I don't want to be married. I'm very happy with a civil partnership. If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership. The word "marriage," I think, puts a lot of people off. You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships.

Seriously, Elton. You're. Not. Helping.

Of course, after getting a glimpse of Rush's taste in interior design, I'm thinking ultimately that Rush and Elton have more in common than one would think at first and bride Kate may be the one humiliated in the end. I mean, how many straight men do you know with a taste for so much gilt?

Amped Status: Not only did Goldman Sachs profit on betting against CDOs they designed to fail; more importantly, they insured them through AIG which led to a $182 billion taxpayer bailout.

Blue Heron Blast: Irreconcilable Differences

Mario Piperni: On Republicans, War, and Dung

Shakesville: We've had nests on the porch, in ferns, and small tress around our home for many years. Amazing!

AlterNet: Exposing the Christian right's new racial playbook

Gawker: WaPo cannot tell Obama from Malcolm X