Last Call: A Large Side Of Stupid

Ray Canterbury thinks poor kids have it easy. Especially the kids who don't get enough to eat and are suffering at school. A recent bill allows for nonprofit and donations to make sure kids eat enough. Because science, that thing Republicans hate, has shown without a doubt that hunger affects school performance.

"I think it would be a good idea if perhaps we had the kids work for their lunches: trash to be taken out, hallways to be swept, lawns to be mowed, make them earn it," Del. Ray Canterbury (R-Greenbrier) said during floor debate. "If they miss a lunch or they miss a meal they might not, in that class that afternoon, learn to add, they may not learn to diagram a sentence, but they'll learn a more important lesson." 

More important than math and grammar?  What could be more important to a child's future than an education?  Oh right, learning their place in the servant class.  We need to teach these softies that when they don't have enough  money, even though that is in no way their fault (you know, being eight years old and all) that they have to be separated from the kids who have plenty.  They need to sweep the floors and pick up trash, and be singled out for their economic status.  Only the rich kids should get the regular treatment at a public school.

This isn't the first time this has been mentioned.  Apparently, this has become a recurring theme among smug wealthy men who know just what America needs.  Men who see nothing wrong with kids not being able to afford food, but don't see anything wrong with the system that reinforces poverty and guarantees that entire families fail for another generation.  West Virginia has higher poverty than most states, and worse education statistics.  Gee, I wonder why?

Leave me alone with this babbling moron for ten minutes.  Ten minutes, and I'd teach him a lesson he would never forget.

I believe education is the great equalizer.  Men like Canterbury hate equality, because it is a threat to his privilege.  What a great way to make sure a few stay on top at the expense of many.

Signed,

A girl who never had enough to eat in school and had to work twice as hard.

Business-Friendly, People-Deadly

Raise your hand if you thought Texas cares about regulating fertilizer plants with hundreds of tons of potentially explosive chemicals, which are placed near schools and nursing homes.  If your hand is still raised, put it the hell down.

West Fertilizer Co.’s problems complying with Texas environmental rules go back decades, state records show.

In 1984, the company moved two large pressurized tanks of liquid anyhydrous ammonia, a potentially lethal poison, from a site in nearby Hill County to its current location in West without notifying state authorities.

Seven years passed before Texas regulators took notice and told the company to fix its paperwork. The tanks had sat at their new location, near homes, schools and a nursing home, with little or no state oversight for all that time.

The company’s regulatory history going back to 1976 comes to light as investigators seek the cause of last week’s fertilizer explosion that killed at least 14 people.

For example, in 1987, the company — then known as West Chemical and Fertilizer Co. — was venting ammonia that built up in transfer pipes into the air despite explicit orders in its permit not to do so. The company apparently changed its practices.

And in 2006, a West police officer called a company employee to tell him an ammonia tank valve was leaking. The employee confirmed the leak and “took the NH3 [ammonia] tank out to the country at his farm,” according to a handwritten note. “West Police followed him.”

That employee, Cody Dragoo, was killed in last week’s explosion.

Seven years.  But government doesn't work, so let's cut spending on regulation and give more tax cuts to companies that break the law and then kill 14 people.  Government small enough that you can drown it in a bathtub isn't going to be able to protect you from companies that murder a dozen folks and go "oops."

Rand Paul Time Warp Theater

Just another reminder that "adamant champion of civil liberties" Sen. Rand Paul is still a lying sack of crap Republican douchebag who will change his stance (he'll filibuster 13 hours!)  in about 13 seconds when it's politically advantageous to do so.  Steve Benen:

In March, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) launched a high-profile filibuster on the Senate floor, bringing attention to drone strikes and civil liberties questions that too often go ignored. But as the spectacle faded, a problem emerged -- Paul didn't seem to fully understand the issue he ostensibly cares so much about.

The Kentucky Republican wanted to know if the Obama administration feels it has the authority to "use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil." Attorney General Eric Holders said the "answer to that question is no." For many involved in the debate, the answer was superficial and incomplete -- who gets to define what constitutes "combat"? what about non-weaponized drones? -- but Paul declared victory and walked away satisfied.

And so did his fans, who happily used Paul's position to attack the President from the left.  At the time I said Paul's position was nonsense and left a huge loophole for use of drones on US soil when it came to bed-wetting anti-terrorism nonsense.   Rand Paul happily got in some fundraising off the stunt and moved on.

Now however since the Boston marathon bombing, and with Rand needing an excuse to scuttle immigration reform he supported last month and to fly the colors on the perpetual security state so he can attack Marco Rubio from the right, Paul is now back to doubling down on use of drones on US soil against US citizens when it comes to Warren Terrah.  Steve Benen again:

Today, the senator went further, saying he's comfortable with drones being used over U.S. soil if the executive branch decides -- without a warrant or oversight -- there's an "imminent threat." Paul told Fox News:

"...I've never argued against any technology being used when you an imminent threat, an active crime going on. If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash, I don't care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him. But it's different if they want to come fly over your hot tub, or your yard just because they want to do surveillance on everyone, and they want to watch your activities."

Oops.  Spoken like a true libertarian.

Tell me again how Rand Paul isn't an authoritarian pig like the rest of the Republicans (and some Dems, granted.)  But at least Barack Obama isn't going around saying he doesn't care who kills a guy who knocked over a liquor store.  Kinda puts a serious dent in his "unfair sentencing bill" credibility...well not really, you don't have to sentence dead people to prison, do you Rand?

Also, let's not forget his libertarian stances on same-sex marriage and women being able to control their own bodies.  Why, it's almost like Rand Paul is an unapologetic Republican jackass and always has been.

And he always will be.  Bookmark this one next time Rand decides he needs to attack President Obama from the left, and pay attention to the people who champion his dog and pony show.  Those are the ones you need to watch out for.

StupidiNews!

• The US is suing disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong to recover money used to promote the Postal Service's sponsorship of his cycling team.
• A former Mitt Romney intern has been arrested for allegedly stalking as many as 15 women with what prosecutors said was the intent to blackmail them over nude photos.
• The State Department is scrambling to deal with Israeli allegations that Syria has used chemical weapons, which could trigger a possible US military response to the Assad regime.
• A compromised AP twitter feed report that the White House had been attacked caused a "flash crash" of nearly 150 points in the Dow on Tuesday afternoon.
• House Democrats are introducing legislation to shift federal subsidies away from helping rural customers purchase landline phones to broadband internet.

Last Call: Max Baucus Returns (Home)

Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus is joining the list of Dems retiring from the Senate next year, in yet another ominous sign for Team Blue to hold on.

At times infuriating his Democratic colleagues, Baucus worked with Republicans to co-write the Bush-era tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug plan, but he also served as the lead defender against George W. Bush’s 2005 effort to partially privatize Social Security and played a critical role in writing President Obama’s national health-care plan.

From conservative-leaning Montana, Baucus has voted against Democratic initiatives on some social issues, most recently last week’s effort to create an expanded background check system for gun purchases.

Despite Obama’s double-digit defeat in Montana, Democrats intend to vigorously defend the seat. The leading Democratic candidate is former governor Schweitzer, a popular figure who at times has feuded with Baucus over local political issues in the Big Sky state. In February, Schweitzer hinted at a potential run in a Facebook post.

The Baucus retirement also could have dramatic policy ramifications. No longer bounded by his own 2014 re-election, Baucus can now push for comprehensive tax reform without concerns about the political ramifications, his allies say.

He and Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the term-limited chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, could jump-start tax reform with both men looking toward their legislative legacy rather than their political fallout within their respective caucuses.

At least Baucus is passing the baton early enough for Schweitzer to make a clean run, but we'll see if the popular former Governor is even going to take a crack at it.  If he passes, the seat will almost certainly go to the GOP.

Having said that, Schweitzer would be better than Baucus on voting with progressive, surely.  We'll see how it shakes out.

Nate's Numbers On The Gun Vote

I said last week that Senate Republicans would pay no price in 2014 for voting adown the Manchin-Toomey compromise legislation on gun violence, and today Nate Silver's numbers back up that argument.

Did the senators who voted against a proposal last week to expand background checks on gun buyers take an electoral risk?

At first glance, it would seem that they did. Background checks are broadly popular with the public. Overwhelming majorities of 80 to 90 percent of the public say they favor background checks when guns are purchased at gun shows, at gun shops or online. Support for background checks drops when guns are bought through informal channels, or gifts from family members — but the amendment that the Senate voted upon last week, sponsored by the Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, would have exempted most of these cases.

And yet, the Senate did not behave as though this was a piece of legislation favored by 80 percent or more of the public. The analysis that we posted last week suggested that, if anything, senators who are up for re-election in 2014 were less likely to vote for the bill.

Which is exactly what happened.  The gun bill came up five votes short, forcing Reid to vote against  it procedurally.  Nate summarizes:

My view, in other words, is that polls showing 90 percent support for background checks will tend to overstate how well the Democrats’ position might play out before the electorate in practice, though public opinion was on their side on this vote.

Moreover, few of the Republican senators who are up for re-election in 2014 are vulnerable for any reason. Only one, Susan Collins of Maine, comes from a state that Barack Obama carried, and she voted for Mr. Manchin’s bill.

In fact, the safety of the Senate Republicans may have enabled them to vote against the amendment, at least in part, for a tactical reason: to protect their colleagues in the House. This is not to suggest that Republicans are likely to lose the House — but there are 17 House Republicans in districts carried by President Obama last year. By preventing the background-check bill from securing the 60 votes necessary to pass the Senate, the Republicans may have prevented their House counterparts from having to take a tough vote.

Thus, Democrats are not in much of a position to capitalize on the vote from the standpoint of individual seats in Congress in 2014. To the extent that the issue plays favorably for Democrats in 2014, it is likely to be for symbolic reasons — because they are able to persuade voters that it reflects a Republican Party that is outside the mainstream.

Which is what I said last week, and in the weeks before.  Nate's analysis is worth reading completely as his numbers show pretty convincingly that no Senate Republicans are going to suffer from this next year.  The real issue was sparing House Republicans from going on record against it, and the Senate GOP played it perfectly.

Look for them to do the same on immigration reform.

Count on it.

Selling Out Marco Rubio

TPM's Benjy Sarlin argues that Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio really is trying to honestly sell immigration reform to his colleagues as a way for the Republicans to move forward (and for Rubio to get major national cred toward the 2016 race as a result.)  The problem of course is two-fold:  Rubio's chief Senate GOP rival is Rand Paul, and the Boston bombings have given him and other Tea Party conservatives the excuse to hang Rubio and his plan out to dry.

Rubio really is a one-man conservative outreach program when it comes to this bill. His ties to the tea party base are so deep that reformers were constantly worried he’d abandon negotiations rather than risk an inevitable backlash by signing onto a compromise. Rubio made light of the dynamic at a press conference introducing the legislation on Thursday when he took the podium, said “Actually, I changed my mind,” and pretended to walk off.

It’s created tension at times with more progressive reformers, but Rubio’s general strategy has been to acknowledge conservative complaints about the bill even while he refuses to back off his support. After reform skeptics in the Senate complained the process was moving too fast, for example, he fought to make sure there were multiple hearings on the bill. He’s spent much of the week appearing on conservative talk radio shows, many of which are hosted by skeptics — even leading opponents — of reform. And his office launched a website devoted entirely to knocking down “myths” about immigration reform, including a false claim this week on conservative blogs that the bill would give free “amnesty phones” to undocumented immigrants.

“It’s tragic that a nation of immigrants remains divided on immigration,” Rubio said at the presser.

None of the other “Gang of 8” Republicans have particularly strong followings on the populist right, so Rubio is really the only option when it comes to this kind of outreach. He’ll face another big test this month containing the fallout from the Boston bombing, where he’s already trying to ease Republican concerns about the bill’s national security implications. 

The 2-ton elephant in the room is of course the fact that tea party Republicans don't want immigration reform, they want to leverage continuing fear and scapegoating of Latinos and other minority groups to increase the percentage of the white vote that the GOP gets at the expense of the Democrats.  The Boston bombings present the perfect opportunity for them to do just that, and to permanently damage Marco Rubio among GOP primary voters heading forward.

Nobody's more excited to play that card than Rand Paul, as I pointed out yesterday.  I predict more than ever that Republicans will use Boston as political cover to end immigration reform, and Marco Rubio will be left holding the bag.  It won't end his career probably, but the 2016 nominee for the GOP will be somebody who went on record against the plan.

Count on it.

StupidiNews!

• A car bomb blast at the French Embassy in Tripoli, Libya has injured 3 and severely damaged the embassy building.
• In a plea deal, Army Sergeant John Russell will face life without parole for admitting killing five soldiers at Camp Liberty in Iraq in May 2009.
• The Thursday opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Texas is expected to draw supporters, dignitaries, and protestors alike.
• Senate Republicans are calling for scrapping comprehensive bipartisan immigration plans in the wake of the Boston bombings and instead replace them with increased border security only.
• The International Trade Commission has sided with Apple in its patent dispute with Motorola, eliminating the last chance at Motorola's request to ban Apple imports.

Last Call, Eh?

Meanwhile, our neighbors to the north continue to calmly and rationally treat terrorism as primarily a law enforcement function, leaving the detective work to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who have busted up a plot to bomb commuter trains in Toronto.

Canadian police say they have arrested two men and thwarted a plot to carry out a major terrorist attack on a Via passenger train in the Greater Toronto Area.

In a press conference that followed an exclusive report by CBC's Greg Weston, police named the two accused as Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, of Montreal, and Raed Jaser, 35, from Toronto. They have been charged with conspiracy to carry out a terrorist attack and "conspiring to murder persons unknown for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with a terrorist group."

The two men arrested are not Canadian citizens, police said Monday, but would not provide any details about their nationalities.

The RCMP accused the two men of conspiring to commit an "al-Qaeda-supported" attack.

The plot was apparently not related to the Boston Marathon bombing, but the Mounties decided to pull the trigger on these two anyway, just in case.  Can't blame them for that, frankly.

Highly placed sources tell CBC News the alleged plotters have been under surveillance for more than a year in Quebec and southern Ontario.

The investigation was part of a cross-border operation involving Canadian law enforcement agencies, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The arrests Monday morning were co-ordinated and executed by a special joint task force of RCMP and CSIS anti-terrorism units, combined with provincial and municipal police forces in Ontario and Quebec.

Gosh, a joint operation with provincial and local cops and help from us Yanks through CSIS.  Solid police work resolves this issue, got good intelligence, and led to an arrest.  What's not happening?  Canadian lawmakers screaming about deporting all Muslims, bugging mosques, and instilling fear in the populace for political gain.

Those Canadians must be insane, right?

Always The Political Operative, Our Rand

Please tell me again how Rand Paul is so different from DC politicians and how he doesn't play stupid Republican political games to score cheap points.  Please.

Losing Paul's support for the legislation could doom the Gang of Eight's legislation. Earlier this year the Tea Party favorite came out in support of comprehensive reform, including a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented workers in the country. His support has given cover to a number of other conservatives who have come out in support of tackling the issue this year.

But Paul made clear he would not be comfortable moving legislation without additional hearings on Boston, and new provisions.

"I respectfully request that the Senate consider the following two conditions as part of the comprehensive immigration reform debate: One, the Senate needs a thorough examination of the facts in Massachusetts to see if legislation is necessary to prevent a similar situation in the future. Two, national security protections must be rolled into comprehensive immigration reform to make sure the federal government does everything it can to prevent immigrants with malicious intent from using our immigration system to gain entry into the United States in order to commit future acts of terror," Paul wrote to Reid.

Please tell me again how my junior senator is a supposed champion of civil liberties and small, effective federal government when he's basically saying we need more "national security protections" in immigration reform and in America in general.

Go on, I could use the laugh.

Once again, Rand Paul is just another red state conservative GOP Senator who doesn't actually care about civil liberties or smaller government, because he just threw both principles away to give himself and other Republicans cover to keep on being racist bigots towards Latinos.

Awesome.

And It Begins

Bush-era Attorney General Michael Mukasey wastes no time today calling the Boston Marathon bombing "jihad" as the Islamophobic ghouls from the last administration offer their unsolicited advice.  Above all YOU MUST BE AFRAID OF MUSLIMS.

But if your concern is over the larger threat that inheres in who the Tsarnaev brothers were and are, what they did, and what they represent, then worry—a lot.

For starters, you can worry about how the High-Value Interrogation Group, or HIG, will do its work. That unit was finally put in place by the FBI after so-called underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up the airplane in which he was traveling as it flew over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009 and was advised of his Miranda rights. The CIA interrogation program that might have handled the interview had by then been dismantled by President Obama.

At the behest of such Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups as the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America, and other self-proclaimed spokesmen for American Muslims, the FBI has bowdlerized its training materials to exclude references to militant Islamism. Does this delicacy infect the FBI's interrogation group as well?

Will we see another performance like the Army's after-action report following Maj. Nidal Hasan's rampage at Fort Hood in November 2009, preceded by his shout "allahu akhbar"—a report that spoke nothing of militant Islam but referred to the incident as "workplace violence"? If tone is set at the top, recall that the Army chief of staff at the time said the most tragic result of Fort Hood would be if it interfered with the Army's diversity program.

Mukasey, his hatred for Islam (and Democratic presidents, with not much space between them apparently) is saying torture and waterboarding could have saved lives.  He dares to say this a mere week after an independent report and review of Bush-era "enhanced interrogation" confirmed that yes, we did torture suspects for information and no, it got zero useful intelligence.

As a result of the Bush administration’s green-lighting of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the report says, “U.S. forces, in many instances, used interrogation techniques on detainees that constitute torture. American personnel conducted an even larger number of interrogations that involved ‘cruel, inhuman, or degrading’ treatment.”

“Both categories of actions violate U.S. laws and international treaties. Such conduct was directly counter to values of the Constitution and our nation,” The Constitution Project report said.

To recap, we committed war crimes under Bush, and not only are the people responsible for that running free, they are writing op-eds in the Wall Street Journal complaining we're not committing more war crimes.

Let that sink in for a bit while we have FOX News trolls suggest we should be bugging all mosques.



It's 2003 all over again for these idiots any always will be.

StupidiNews!

• Chinese officials are saying that the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that rocked Sichuan province on Saturday has killed at least 186 people and injured hundreds more.
• Paraguay voted Sunday on a replacement for now impeached ex-President Fernando Lugo, most likely resulting in the return to power of the country's conservative Colorado Party.
• Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel arrived in Israel Monday to begin his week-long tour of the Middle East, where he's expected to deliver new air power for America's allies in the region.
• The latest media mega-merger may be Time-Warner and CBS, creating an $85 billion company in the wake of Comcast's recent buyout of NBC Universal.
• Boston Police say surveillance cameras, crowd photos, and eyewitness accounts helped pinpoint bombing suspects, but facial recognition software came up noticeably short.

More Republican Second Amedment Remedies

Shorter Benton County, Arkansas Republican Party:  "It's a shame that some Republican state lawmakers betrayed us and voted to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.  It's an equal shame that we can't shoot these lawmakers, either."

Republicans in Benton County, Arkansas are not happy that their state legislators have agreed to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. In this month’s newsletter, columnist Chris Nogy encouraged his fellow Republicans to utilize their 2nd Amendment rights to make sure that lawmakers — particularly Republicans who vote with Democrats — are held accountable.

Here's Nogy's column, in part:

We need to let those who will come in the future to represent us that we are serious.  The 2nd amendment means nothing unless those in power believe you would have no problem simply walking up and shooting them if they got too far out of line and stopped responding as representatives. It seems that we are unable to muster that belief in any of our representatives on a state or federal level, but we have to have something, something costly, something that they will fear that we will use if they step out of line. If we can’t shoot them, we have to at least be firm in our threat to take immediate action against them politically, socially, and civically if they screw up on something this big. Personally, I think a gun is quicker and more merciful, but hey, we can’t.

That's nice.  It's a shame we can't murder people we disagree with politically because it would be more "merciful" than what they deserve, but oh well.  Hey, isn't there a legal term for threatening to bring bodily harm to a group of people over purely political reasons?  I can't think of the word...hold on...

Such heated rhetoric from the Arkansas GOP is not new. Last week, state Rep. Neal Bell (R) tweeted that he bet the “cowering liberals” in Boston were “wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine.” Arkansas House Speaker Davy Carter (R) issued a public apology to Boston on behalf of Bell’s insensitive remark, and Bell ultimately offered his own apology.

But New Black Panther Party, so both sides do it.

She's Completely Dowd Of Her Mind

MoDo The Red cannot blame President Obama quickly enough for the failure of gun violence legislation, in a pretty solid candidate for worst NY Times op-ed of 2013.

President Obama has watched the blood-dimmed tide drowning the ceremony of innocence, as Yeats wrote, and he has learned how to emotionally connect with Americans in searing moments, as he did from the White House late Friday night after the second bombing suspect was apprehended in Boston. 

Unfortunately, he still has not learned how to govern. 

How is it that the president won the argument on gun safety with the public and lost the vote in the Senate? It’s because he doesn’t know how to work the system. And it’s clear now that he doesn’t want to learn, or to even hire some clever people who can tell him how to do it or do it for him. 

It’s unbelievable that with 90 percent of Americans on his side, he could get only 54 votes in the Senate. It was a glaring example of his weakness in using leverage to get what he wants. No one on Capitol Hill is scared of him. 

Even House Republicans who had no intention of voting for the gun bill marveled privately that the president could not muster 60 votes in a Senate that his party controls. 

Dowd's staggering ignorance of how Washington works betrays her own insecurities and inabilities to pin the problem on the real culprit:  the 41 Republican senators who blocked Manchin-Toomey.  These folks blocked the measure because they hate Obama and want to destroy him, not because they "fear" him.  They blocked the measure because screaming Village airheads like Dowd serve as useful idiots who blame Obama regardless of the actual culpability of a party dedicated to the destruction of anything the President decides to do.  

Any thinking observer would notice immediately that the Republicans in the Senate never had any intention of approaching gun violence legislation in good faith.  If anything, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Republicans took advantage of the situation, got the President and Senate Democrats to commit to Manchin-Toomey by stringing along the notion that hope was alive, and then burned them all for political advantage.

It's easy to say that "What Republicans fear is the NRA" but it's more than that.  What they fear is being replaced by people even more recalcitrant and more hateful than they are themselves toward not just the President, but more vitriolic towards the very idea that federal governance is even possible.  Dowd bemoans the President's supposed inability to govern and his ability to learn how to.  She should be going after the people making it impossible to govern at all.

We're trapped in a hell of our own making, where the only possible movement of one party is toward more nihilist extremism, not away from the brink of chaos, and Maureen Dowd is spouting empty nonsense about how good government is found in a Michael Douglas movie.  If she hasn't figured out by now that she's part of the problem with the government she complains about not working by disgorging this pile of fever-bright crap allowing the real culprits to escape blame, all while raging impotently at the only guy who can possibly fix the problem, she never will.

At this point, Maureen Dowd has to be considered part of the reason why Washington remains ungovernable.  At the very least, she remains part of the reason it is considered by those outside the Beltway as pathetic.

[UPDATE]  Walter Russell Mead absolutely levels Dowd in his column today.

Column writing is dangerous work and long success in the game can lead to the stifling of that Editor Within who keeps you from looking too stupid in print. A rich self esteem, fortified by decades of op-ed tenure and dinner party table talk dominance, has apparently given Ms. Dowd the confidence to believe that she is a maestro of political infighting, a Clausewitz of strategic insight and a Machiavelli of political cunning rolled up into one stylish and elegant piece of work. From the heights of insight on which she dwells, it is easy to see what that poor schmuck Barry Obama can’t: those 60 votes on gun control were his for the taking, if he was only as shrewd a politician as Maureen Dowd.

Do read the rest.  Dowd is the prototypical emoprog, whose only real defining trait is that they believe they know everything better than President Obama, manifesting itself in a blind hatred for the man that rivals the worst Republican lunatics.

Last Call

And the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto completely loses it in an epic tinfoil screed blaming the Boston Marathon bombing and basically everything wrong in the last century on the "thuggish majoritarianism of the Obama-era left".

The left's and the media's reflexive search for right-wing perpetrators is not unique to this attack. Indeed, it's not even unique among attacks this week. On Tuesday the office of Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, received a letter containing ricin, a toxin derived from the castor oil plant. United Press International reported that the Anti-Defamation League "said ricin . . . is popular with domestic extremists. . . . Many ricin incidents have been attributed to homegrown extremists, particularly right-wing groups such as anti-government extremists and white supremacists. Other ricin incidents have been unrelated to any specific ideology, the ADL said."

A suspect, Paul Curtis, was quickly caught. On Wednesday the Jackson Clarion Ledger published a photo of him, posing with a bumper sticker that reads "Christian and a Democrat."

It is true, of course, that some terrorist attacks are committed by white supremacists, antiabortion extremists or others on what is called "the extreme right." It was not unreasonable to consider that as a possibility when Boston was bombed.

What is unreasonable is the impulse to blame mainstream conservatives, including the Tea Party, a diffuse mass movement that has never been linked to any violence. Never forget that after the Tucson massacre of 2011, the New York Times editorialized that "it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible"--even though it was already known that the killer had no political motive.

What the hope-they're-white crowd really wishes for is a reason to treat their domestic political adversaries as enemies of the state.

Where do I begin with dismantling this textbook case of projection?  Should I start with Taranto complaining about his voicelessness against the "media" when he's penning the day's top op-ed in the Wall Street Journal?  How about his rage over the Tea Party and conservatives being unfairly painted with broad strokes while in the same article he is indicting all liberals, all of the "media", all Muslims, all Democrats, and all Obama supporters as "thugs" and "fascists"?  His blithe dismissal of criticism of a Tea Party movement that has "never been linked to any violence" when even a cursory search pulls up dozens of incidents and his own article references abortion clinic bombers and white supremacists?  His utter contempt for the 90% of Americans who supported background checks for firearms as having "no organic reality" that is a "sign of weakness, not strength"?

It amazes me that a national newspaper would be employing Taranto at all at this point, considering how completely bonkers he has become.   Instead, like Jennifer Rubin's daily disgraceful slop at the Washington Post, he gets a platform to spew nonsense that should rightfully be laughed out of the room.

The problem of course is that tens of thousands of people read both of them daily and millions agree with them.