And Shep Smith does real journalism again. I can’t find an embeddable video of this, but you can see it over at Crooks and Liars and you should watch the whole thing. What he reports is:
- There was a left-wing extremist report released in January, that we haven’t heard anyone whine about yet. Any thoughts as to why?
- Both of these reports were commissioned by BushCo, and were released after Bush left.
- The current energy that conservatives are putting into this misses the point of these documents.
David Niewart points out that the current effort at working the refs here is about making the kind of violent rhetoric that conservatives are so fond of the new normal. While we have our own example locally of a liberal making a violent threat in definite hyperbolic mode — and the local conservative rookie league never fail to bring that up as some kind of original sin. While they NEVER disavow — much less acknowledge — the violence or violent rhetoric from their own. They, apparently, are entitled to violent speech, and no one else should infringe on that entitlement.
But even the local example is not the lind of thing that law enforcement is looking at, which the pushers of this talking point certainly know. The point is certainly to continue to inoculate the right from any accountability of what they say by embracing the worst of their fringe elements. Personally, I am perfectly happy that law enforcement is watching groups like Aryan Nations or the known violent anti-abortion groups. In the very same way I am perfectly OK with law enforcement monitoring the Bloods and the Crips.
But the real question here is this — now that FOX News itself has reported on the real scope of these DHS reports, do the wingnuts believe them and stand down on their current claims to victimization? They are fair and balanced, after all. Or does the irrepressible Tbogg have the real story here?