Bitch Slapping Morris Dees

Morris Dees, d/b/a Southern Poverty Law Center is the Al Gore of hatred, from Anna Schecter, ABC News, is alleged to to an investigative reporter.

Anti-government sentiments in the U.S. have reached levels so high they could result in another attack like the Oklahoma City bombing, according to a report released Tuesday by an organization that tracks right-wing extremists – and the authors of the report place part of the blame on Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin

[…]

A host of recent attacks on law enforcement, plots against President Obama, and a shooting at Washington, D.C.’s Holocaust museum are “signs of the times,” said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit group that monitors militias, white supremacists, and other extremist activity. Potok made his comments during a teleconference with reporters to promote the SPLC’s latest annual report on hate-group activity

On the other hand, Robert Stacy McCain, may be a red neck blogger, but McCain is not more of a reporter than Schector, from Other McCain.

Dangerous extremist militias taking over America? The Southern Poverty Law Center reports “an astonishing 363 new Patriot groups appeared in 2009, with the totals going from 149 groups (including 42 militias) to 512 (127 of them militias) – a 244% jump” from 2008.
OK, so let’s ask a question: How does the SPLC get these numbers? Do a “find” search on the their list of “Patriot” groups and you discover:

• 37 listings of the John Birch Society;
• 48 listings of We the People;
• 49 listings of Oath Keepers; and
• 50 listings of the Constitution Party.

According to the SPLC’s math, then, state-by-state representation of these four organizations count as 184 “Patriot groups” —  36 percent of the SPLC’s total.

Then William A. Jacobson, Legal Insurrection, doesn’t even call himself a reporter at all, just a law professor.  Yet Jacobson knows more about the Klu Klux Klan in Rhoad Island, the Dess purportsL

But there was one aspect of the report which really caught my eye. SPLC’s report lists Rhode Island as having three hate groups, but the SPLC “hate map” indicates only a single Ku Klux Klan chapter in Rhode Island.

Even that seemed strange to me, because in the 17 years I have lived in Rhode Island, I never had heard of the Klan being active in Rhode Island.

Other gangs, yes. Violent gangs are active among Hmong and other Asian immigrant groups, as are street gangs in black neighborhoods of Providence. But the Klan?

Bruce McQuain, Q and O,  wraps it all up nicely and puts a ribbon on it:

Of course the Ft. Hood and Little Rock Recruiting station killings were worse than any of that. There’s the Ft. Dix bomb plot and the Ft. Jackson 5 – none of them apparently worth mentioning. Nope – it’s all about the “radical right violence reminiscent of the 1990s” when it was Rush Limbaugh that was the cause.

And, let’s face it – as usual, these press releases come out from the SPLC just about the time it is pimping a new quarterly report, this one entitled “Right Rage”. It’s revenue generation time. What better way to scare up money than by scaring donors into opening their wallets.

The news and analysis the lame stream media can’t seem to find.