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[Note: I confirmed earlier today that my interview with Anderson Cooper regarding "lone wolf" violence will air on AC360 tonight, so be sure to catch it on CNN.]

When that Homeland Security bulletin on right-wing extremism was issued two months, C&L was among the first to point out the report's complete factual accuracy. In retrospect, there are some methodological issues with the bulletin, which Leonard Zeskind ably limns; and the report's political framing unfortunately left it open to political attack.

Yet, as we've seen this week, it was clearly prescient in warning about the dangers posed by lone wolves and small-cell terrorists. Shepard Smith notwithstanding, everyone at Fox has been pushing hard to convince the public once again the DHS report was wrong. Next: Rupert Murdoch is the King of the Moon.

Among them: Neil Cavuto yesterday on his daily Fox News program. He invited a Gulf War vet named Matthew Burden on to talk about how wrong the report was. This produced some real howlers.

Burden: Well, first of all, this report was poorly written, and it was a completely unprovoked attack on our veterans.

Well, regardless of its literary qualities, the report in fact was not only perfectly accurate -- it was in fact issued largely in response to the shooting of three police officers in by a right-wing extremist Pittsburgh the week prior. Moreover, the warning raised regarding veterans was strictly about the effort by right-wing extremist groups, particularly neo-Nazi organizations, to recruit returning veterans -- a fact that had already been long established.

Finally, it must be pointed out that the DHS report in fact accurately predicted that the most significant domestic-terrorism threat Americans faced was going to come from "lone wolf" and small-cell terrorists motivated by right-wing extremism. Not that Neil or his guest ever bother to discuss this point.

Cavuto: I always wonder if -- the prior administration had said the exact same thing, you know, how differently that might have been treated.

Good question, Neil -- because, as Catherine Herridge and Shepard Smith reported on Fox they did say "the exact same thing" -- this report was in fact commissioned by the Bush administration.

So we wonder, indeed, how this would have been reported if any of the rest of Greater Wingnuttia had bothered to report that fact as well?

Most of all, Cavuto wants to emphasize the portion of the report that discussed veterans -- but ignores the fact that most right-wingers were outraged not just over that portion, but over what they saw as conflation of right-wing extremists with their own mainstream conservatism. Of course, what they mostly were intent on doing was futilely scrubbing to get that nasty right-wing extremist stain out.

Fortunately, all you had to do was switch the channel to MSNBC to get a reasonable and intelligent discussion of the DHS memo between Mark Potok of the SPLC and Keith Olbermann:

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[Note: I was interviewed last night for CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 program to discuss lone wolves. My interview didn't air yesterday, but Cooper indicated they'd be reporting more on the "lone wolf" phenomenon tonight, so here's hoping my interview airs this evening. In the meantime, here's a warmup report, featuring the first of Cooper's pieces.]

When the Department of Homeland Security issued that law-enforcement bulletin on right-wing extremists two months ago, the mainstream right's chief shrieking point was that somehow the bulletin had conflated them with the extremist right-wingers.

Some typical headlines: "DHS Report Labels Conservatives as Radical Extremists". "The DHS Declares Everyone In America Is A Domestic Terrorist". "DHS To Target Conservatives." "New DHS Domestic Terrorism Report Targets Millions of Americans". And on and on. The upshot: Homeland Security was labeling conservatives America's chief terrorist threat.

But if you read the actual report, here's what it says is the chief domestic-terror threat America faces:

DHS/I&A assesses that lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States. Information from law enforcement and nongovernmental organizations indicates lone wolves and small terrorist cells have shown intent—and, in some cases, the capability—to commit violent acts.

[..] DHS/I&A has concluded that white supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy—separate from any formalized group—which hampers warning efforts.

[..] Similarly, recent state and municipal law enforcement reporting has warned of the dangers of rightwing extremists embracing the tactics of “leaderless resistance” and of lone wolves carrying out acts of violence.

Now, here's the odd thing about "lone wolves": Right-wingers like to use the solitary nature of this kind of terrorist act to dismiss them as "isolated incidents." But in reality, the continuing existence of acts of this nature demonstrates primarily that the radical right in America is alive, well, and functioning better than it should. And the continuing -- and as we've seen this week, ultimately futile -- attempts by the right to whitewash their existence from the public consciousness have played no small part in helping that trend continue.

Watch the above video for an instructive comparison in how this is handled by a right-winger like Fox's Bill O'Reilly, and a more rational, rather centrist approach taken by Anderson Cooper and his guests on AC360 last night.

O'Reilly declares the matter over -- move along, move along -- because this was just a "lone nutcase." Meanwhile, Cooper and the SPLC's Mark Potok and anti-racist activist David Gletty have a thorough an rational discussion of what lone wolves are about.

As Potok explains, the "lone wolf" concept was popularized in the late 1980s by an Aryan Nations leader named Louis Beam as an extension of his strategy of "leaderless resistance." One white supremacist, a fellow named Alex Curtis, even went so far as to develop a "point system" for lone wolves.

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Here's a collection of posts by angry, right wing conservatives who were freaking out when the DHS report was released. Obviously our soldiers aren't the focus of the report, but the right wing kooks needed to find something to attack it with because the report perfectly highlighted the issue at hand. And as we've seen so far, right-wing violence is up dramatically since President Obama was elected.

Limbaugh: Bring me the head of Janet Napolitano!

Pat Robertson urges his callers to crash Homeland Security hotline

Hannity: It's an insult to suggest that veterans are bias-crime victims

Conservatives are trying to whitewash far-right terrorists out of our memories There was Bill Bennett, that right-wing moral icon, telling John King's "State of the Union" panel yesterday on CNN that DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano's clear explanation wasn't good enough.

Is the DHS watching returning veterans? Only when they join far-right hate groups -- O'Reilly says the report was "unnecessary," cooked up by a bevy of myopic "far left" liberals freshly ensconced in their DHS offices.

Shepard Smith seems to understand what we've been saying for a long time.

Smith says Holocaust Museum shooting "reminds me" of the DHS report on "crazy extremists"; Herridge concurs.

Janet Napolitano apologized for the DHS report on right wing extremism after being hammered relentlessly by the Limbaughs and Hannitys. How long before right wing talkers try to blame liberals for targeting their hate speech? How long before FOX News has a little talk to Smith? Naw, he got a big contract recently. Nevermind.

(Please donate to C&L's 2009 fundraiser if you can. We need your support.)

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Sean Hannity's been trying hard to come up with some fresh ideas that could help rejuvenate movement conservatism and the Republican Party. So the other night he ran a special "6 Ideas to Save America" that he thought would be a swell way to reclaim conservatism as the movement of ideas (which it never really was in the first place, but nevermind).

No. 6 was "Illegal immigration." This had to be interesting, since the Right's naked nativism in the 2008 campaign played a not-insignificant role in its outcome, and the GOP has been grappling with how to deal with the cold reality that their longtime immigrant-bashing ways have hurt their future electoral prospects considerably.

Hannity's idea: "E-verify," a system that would require employers to electronically verify the Social Security numbers of their employers, which would indeed reduce the ability of illegal immigrants to obtain jobs in the USA. He invited Alabama Sen. Jeff Sesssions, a Republican who's been pushing this plan, on to talk about it.

There's nothing wrong with E-verify, really, except:

A) It would only resolve a limited portion of the problem with our immigration system.

B) It would punch a big hole in our federal revenues, to the tune of about $17.3 billion.

C) It doesn't work, at least not yet.

Perhaps Hannity ought to read the Wall Street Journal, who called E-Verify "The Last Thing Employers Need":

Proponents tout E-Verify as a way to curb the hiring of illegal aliens. But the program is plagued by serious problems that include misidentifying U.S. citizens as not authorized for employment.

In 2007, DHS commissioned an independent study of E-Verify, which concluded that "the database used for verification is still not sufficiently up to date to meet the requirements for accurate verification." The error rate was almost 10% for foreign-born U.S. citizens. E-Verify's vulnerability to identity fraud is also problematic. A person using a valid Social Security card that doesn't belong to him would go undetected by the system. Mandating use of E-Verify could provide a nice boon to an already thriving document-fraud industry.

... The E-Verify mandate is already part of the House stimulus, and Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama is still hoping to add it to the Senate bill before final passage.

But simply cracking down on employers isn't the answer, especially when such efforts aren't coupled with expanding the authorized work force. The best way to reduce the hiring of illegals is to put in place a guest-worker program that gives U.S. employers better access to legal foreign workers. Most U.S. employers don't have a problem with being held accountable for the workers they hire, so long as the government is providing them with the proper tools to abide by the law. E-Verify clearly doesn't meet that standard, and until it does the program ought to remain voluntary.

Illegal immigration tends to flow and ebb based on the strength of the U.S. economy. Given the recession, it's likely to decline in the short-run, and Congress might use the lull to enact some substantive policy reforms. Work-site enforcement should be part of a broader immigration debate, not something slipped into a stimulus bill to placate protectionists.

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Well, the talkers at Fox, along with the rest of the right-wing propaganda machine, just can't stop talking about that Department of Homeland Security bulletin about the potential threat of right-wing domestic terrorism. Which means, as always, that they are spreading the bullmanure far and wide.

Of course, what they're doing in the process is essentially substantiating one of the central theses of my book The Eliminationists -- namely, that the gravitational effect of the extremist right on mainstream conservatism in recent years has pulled conservatism even farther right, to the point that the differences between them are rapidly vanishing. Hey, if they want to make my point for me, I'm all too happy to let them.

Now, here are the main talking points raised by Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and their guests about the DHS bulletin:

-- Beck says the report specifically singled out veterans and targeted them for investigation of possible far-right extremism.

-- Byron York says the report really was based on nothing but speculation, since in its opening lines it explains there is no evidence of specific plots yet.

-- York adds that the similar report on left-wing terrorists named specific groups, while the right-wing report was more amorphous (and thus had less "meat on its bones") since it did not list any specific groups.

-- Col. Ralph Peters (last seen attacking President Obama for his "weakness" on the Somali pirates just before Obama's order freed that ship captain) says this report is the product of military-hating "Hollywood" people in the new Obama administration.

-- O'Reilly says the report was "unnecessary," cooked up by a bevy of myopic "far left" liberals freshly ensconced in their DHS offices.

-- O'Reilly tells Beck that these liberals' myopia leads them to ignore Al Qaeda while pinning the terrorism label on ordinary conservatives. (He echoes Pat Robertson in this claim.)

All of it, of course, is wrong. Complete, freshly laid, unfettered bullmanure.

OK, I'm going to walk quickly through these backwards, since the first talking point is the most pervasive and most in need of addressing:

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Pat Robertson, on The 700 Club yesterday, got in on the collective right-wing teeth-gnashing over that Department of Homeland Security bulletin on the threat posed by right-wing extremists in America.

You know, the controversy that's been demonstrated to be a lot of hot air -- not to mention a terribly revealing one about how mainstream right-wingers see themselves.

Not that such mere trifles would ever deter Pat Robertson. His attack on the DHS yesterday, alongside his coanchor Terry Meeuwsen, featured an unending stream of flatly false information and mischaracterizations. Plus, of course, the requisite gay-bashing and liberal bashing, all wrapped up in a neat little ball:

Robertson: If that had been a Republican, there would be outrage and screams for Janet Napolitano to resign immediately. That -- Terry, you're somebody who favors life, wants to keep little babies alive. Somebody who has been a veteran and served our country as a proud member of the military. Somebody who is opposed to the left-wing policies of the administration and who wants to express his or her views as they are entitled to under our Constitution, these people are now being stigmatized as terrorists! This is an outrage!

Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to do something about it. If that doesn't get you excited, I don't know what would. And I want you to call a number. This is the Department of Homeland Security.

[Reads number]

... And just say you protest. This is an outrage!

And Janet Napolitano has got a lot of explaining to do. And that lame excuse she was giving -- 'Oh, I'm sorry they characterized all veterans that way' -- I mean, come off it!

Meeuwsen: The report was the report. I mean, it is astonishing that it was allowed to leave under that --

Robertson: It -- it shows somebody down in the bowels of that organization is either a convinced left-winger or somebody whose sexual orientation is somewhat in question.

But it's that kind of thing, somebody who doesn't think that we should have abortion on demand, is labeled a terrorist! It's outrageous!

Then, after a news segment that ended with a story about Somali pirates, Robertson gets back to his rant:

Robertson: These people [pirates] are terrorists. Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization. The extreme Muslims are terrorists and they are being trained to destroy America.

So what does our Homeland Security Department come out with? They say, well, the real terrorists are people who are conservative, who are former veterans of the United States military, who believe in the sanctity of human life, and who don't like the policies of the current administration. These are the major threat to America.

Now, that in my opinion, is an outrage. And I think if you don't speak out against it, it's going to be allowed to stand. So I want to give you that number again. Ring those phones up there in Washington, let them know people care.

[Reads number]

That you protest this -- ah, stigmatism of law-abiding Americans as being right-wing threats to America.

[Repeats number]

And if you jam up their lines, good for you!

While I could think of a few organizations whose lines it might be a good idea to jam, Homeland Security would not be one of them.

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Shepard Smith brought that rarest of things to Fox News yesterday: amid the cacophony over the Tea Parties, he actually committed an act of journalism. In the process, he also managed to also bring a voice of sanity to the nonstop right-wing shrieking at Fox over the recent Department of Homeland Security bulletin about the possible rise of right-wing extremism.

In fact, Smith confirms everything we've reported here: Not only is the report focused entirely on the very real problem of the lethally violent potential of extremist right-wing terrorism, but mainstream conservatives' wailing and teeth-gnashing over it is -- besides being an egregious display of a persecution complex -- if anything a tacit admission of their own complicity in fueling extremist rhetoric.

Catherine Herridge looked into the claims of the Malkinites and essentially blew it all out of the water:

Herridge: Essentially, the driver in these intelligence assessments is the downturn in the economy. What they say, essentially, is that when people have less money, that they're out of work, they feel disenfranchised. This is fertile ground for groups on the left as well as groups on the right.

And you remember, from reporting on this show, Shep, that even at the end of last year, prior to the inauguration, the Department of Homeland Security under the Bush administration was sounding the alarm about the potential for right-wing groups to act, specifically because of the economy, and also because America was going to have its first African-American president.

Smith: So if this bulletin from April 7 looks at the right-wing groups, is there a bulletin that looks at left-wing groups as well?

Herridge: Yeah, we were able to obtain that bulletin as well. It came out in January, and didn't get -- there it is -- didn't get the same attention. It looked specifically at groups like the Earth Liberation Front, or ELF, groups that in the opinion of Homeland Security, in the future will try and attack economic targets and specifically use cyber-attacks, because they see that is sympatico, or in concert with some of their other beliefs.

So there are two assessments. The one on the left, the one on the right is the one that's getting the attention because of the leak.

... I would point out that both of these assessments, Shep, were commissioned under the Bush administration. It takes some time to do them. They only came out after he left office.

Smith then featured an interview with intelligence specialist Mike Baker, who confirmed Herridge's reporting further and suggested that conservatives were grasping at some self-revealing straws here.

Still, that didn't prevent Sean Hannity, only a few hours later, from pontificating at length with Joe the Plumber about how the mean DHS was targeting the tea parties:

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One of conservatives' least endearing social traits is that It's All About Them. Always.

In the video above, you can see everyone from Rush Limbaugh to the usual Fox talking heads ranting and whining that the recent internal Department of Homeland Security intelligence report on right-wing domestic terrorists was inspired by government fear over today's Tea Parties.

As if. Do any of these people have any idea how long it takes to compile this kind of threat assessment? Ah, but how can we forget? On Planet Wingnuttia, all the world revolves around them and their serial dumbassery.

Minnesota Independent has a wrapup on all the right-wing bloggers who leapt to the assumption that the DHS report was aimed at the "tea parties."

Then there's Lou Dobbs:

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He's so certain it's All About Him, he even put up one of his fake polls asking if someone like himself might be a domestic terrorist:

Our poll question tonight is: Do you think a person concerned about borders and ports that are unsecured, illegal immigration, Second Amendment rights or returning veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is likely or even possibly probable, as the Department of Homeland Security suggests to be a right-wing extremist? Yes or no. Cast your vote at LouDobbs.com. We'll have the results here later in the broadcast.

OK, here's a cluestick for the wingnuts: This report, and the timing of its release, is not about Tea Parties. It's also not about Latino-bashers, except to the extent that Latino-bashers like Dobbs get the serious haters all worked up.

It's about Richard Poplawski. And the dozens, if not hundreds, of little latent Poplawskis out there, waiting to pop off and kill more police officers, or just as likely, a crowd of innocent bystanders.

Of course, you all would like us to forget about Richard Poplawski as soon as possible, wouldn't you, given the mainstream right's culpability in that case?

The Department of Homeland Security more than likely couldn't give a rat's patoot about today's right-wing Tea Tantrums, because they're mostly exercises in futility and stupidity anyway.

But I'll tell you who they do care about: the people in uniform who go out every day and put their lives on the line to keep you and I and our families and neighborhoods safe -- that is, the men and women in law enforcement. People like those three officers in Pittsburgh, who had no reason to suspect a killer was about to ambush them.

A recent study by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism lays out in painful detail the very real threat that right-wing extremists pose to people in law enforcement:

Research led by Dr. Joshua D. Freilich (John Jay College, CUNY) and Dr. Steven Chermak (Michigan State University) and funded by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) has revealed a violent history of fatal attacks against law enforcement officers in the United States by individuals who adhere to far-right ideology.

* In the United States, 42 law enforcement officers have been killed in 32 incidents in which at least one of the suspects was a far-rightist since 1990.

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My my my. The right, led by Michelle Malkin, is up in arms over the Department of Homeland Security's internal intelligence report on right-wing extremism and its post-Obama resurgence.

Malkin's headline wails:

"The Obama DHS Hit Job on Conservatives Is Real"

So, I have a question for Malkin: Are you saying that mainstream conservatives are now right-wing extremists?

Because, you know, the report -- which in fact is perfectly accurate in every jot and tittle -- couldn't be more clear. It carefully delineates that the subject of its report is "rightwing extremists," "domestic rightwing terrorist and extremist groups," "terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks," "white supremacists," and similar very real threats described in similar language.

Nothing about conservatives. The word never appears in the report.

Because, you know, we always thought there was a difference between right-wing extremists and mainstream conservatives too. My new book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, does explain that the distance between them has in fact shrunk considerably, thanks to the help of people like Malkin.

And now she's evidently intent on shrinking it further:

By contrast, the piece of crap report issued on April 7 is a sweeping indictment of conservatives. And the intent is clear. As the two spokespeople I talked with on the phone today made clear: They both pinpointed the recent “economic downturn” and the “general state of the economy” for stoking “rightwing extremism.” One of the spokespeople said he was told that the report has been in the works for a year. My b.s. detector went off the chart, and yours will, too, if you read through the entire report — which asserts with no evidence that an unquantified “resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalizations activity” is due to home foreclosures, job losses, and…the historical presidential election.

Well, Michelle, it's an "indictment of conservatives" if you say so. The report itself, in fact, is all about accurately identifying very real looming threats. And, while it's obvious Malkin hasn't been paying attention, there in fact is considerable data coming over the transom to indicate that there's a real problem looming with the far right.

Don't forget: Before he'd even been sworn into office, we had skinheads [photo above] being arrested for plotting Obama's assassination.

Malkin complains that the report indulges in "anti-military bigotry" by warning that returning veterans who have been radicalized, or were already right-wing extremists, are a particular threat:

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OK, we keep entering the land of the bizarre.

A German graduate student in oceanography at M.I.T. applied to the Transportation Security Administration for a new ID card allowing him to work around ships and docks.

What the student, Wilken-Jon von Appen, received in return was a letter that not only turned him down but added an ominous warning from John M. Busch, a security administration official: "I have determined that you pose a security threat."

Similar letters have gone to 5,000 applicants across the country who have at least initially been turned down for a Transportation Worker Identification Credential, an ID card meant to guard against acts of terrorism, agency officials said Monday.

And the agency is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration matters, including student visas.

Ms. Guichard-Ashbrook said the security agency should remove the misleading language from all files and issue new letters formally withdrawing the "threat" label.

But Ms. Howe, the agency spokeswoman, said that the letters were legal, if flawed, and that there were no plans to send replacements.

Q: Yes, my name is Wilken and I would like an ID please?

A: Dude, you have a weird name and are from a foreign land therefore you are deemed a security threat and maybe sent to Gitmo immediately.

What the heck is going on?