The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, announced today that it has filed a federal lawsuit against Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The lawsuit claims that her Department’s “Rightwing Extremism Policy,” as reflected in the recently publicized Intelligence Assessment, “ Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” violates the civil liberties of combat veterans as well as American citizens by targeting them for disfavored treatment on account of the political beliefs.
So let me get this straight, the Rightwing really thinks that Homeland Security is targeting Conservatives, just for the fun of it?
Where were all this outrage when Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, two show producers and other journalists including an AP photographer were being arrested at the Republican National Convention for no reason?
Apparently MIA. Instead of realizing that Left-Wing groups have frankly been illegally surveilled, harassed, watch-listed and treated far worse than simply having a "mean report" written about them they say this.
Thompson added, “Janet Napolitano is lying to the American people when she says the Report is not based on ideology or political beliefs. In fact, her report would have the admiration of any current or past dictator in the way it targets political opponents.”
The Report specifically mentions the following political beliefs that law enforcement should use to determine whether someone is a “rightwing extremist”:
• Opposes restrictions on firearms
• Opposes lax immigration
• Opposes the policies of President Obama regarding immigration, citizenship and the expansion of social programs
• Opposes continuation of free trade agreements
• Opposes same-sex marriage
• Has paranoia of foreign regimes
• Fear of Communist regimes
• Opposes one world government
• Bemoans the decline of U.S. stature in the world.
• Upset with loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs to China and India
• . . . and the list goes on
The Law Center is asking the court to declare that the DHS policy violates the First and Fifth Amendments, to permanently enjoin the Policy and its application to the plaintiffs’ speech and other activities, and to award the plaintiffs their reasonable attorney’s fees and costs for having to bring the lawsuit.
Ok, the report in plain english does not simply attack people with right-wing beliefs.
It says this.
The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues.
Let me repeat, they aren't addressing your average church group here, they are talking about Right Wing TERRORISTS groups. Extremist Groups. They aren't saying Pro-Lifers have been recruiting, they're saying that VIOLENT groups like Operation Rescue which featured a "Wanted for Murder" list of Doctors, who were later shot to death by James Kopp, have been recruiting.
They are talking about Neo-Nazi White Supremacist/Anti-Government Hate Groups.
Threats from white supremacist and violent antigovernment groups during 2009 have been largely rhetorical and have not indicated plans to carry out violent acts. Nevertheless, the consequences of a prolonged economic downturn—including real estate foreclosures, unemployment, and an inability to obtain credit—could create a fertile recruiting environment for rightwing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the past.The report warns that we need to be vigilant against a return of the worst of the worst, people like Kopp, people like Timothy McVeigh and Eric Robert Rudolph who injured 110 people and killed two with his multiple bombings including one at the Atlanta Olympics.
Paralleling the current national climate, rightwing extremists during the 1990s exploited a variety of social issues and political themes to increase group visibility and recruit new members. Prominent among these themes were the militia movement’s opposition to gun control efforts, criticism of free trade agreements (particularly those with Mexico), and highlighting perceived government infringement on civil liberties as well as white supremacists’ longstanding exploitation of social issues such as abortion, inter-racial crimes, and same-sex marriage. During the 1990s, these issues contributed to the growth in the number of domestic rightwing terrorist and extremist groups and an increase in violent acts targeting government facilities, law enforcement officers, banks, and infrastructure sectors.
In 1995 a White-Power group of soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg Murdered James Burmeister and Malcolm Wright just to earn the right to wear a skin-head tattoo. In 2007, 12 years later, things at Fort Bragg show signs of going backward as yet another pair of White Supremacists were arrested.
Two soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were arrested on June 4, 2007, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and charged with selling stolen government property, including body armor and drugs, to an undercover FBI agent in Concord, North Carolina, on May 24.
One of the soldiers, Joffre "Trey Cross, 21, of Texas, is a white supremacist who has posted messages on white supremacist Internet forums graphically describing ways to kill Jews, such as positioning oneself outside a synagogue with a machine gun. On several different white supremacist forums, Cross used "jagervonjuden" (or "fighter of Jews") as a screen name and offered to give other white supremacists paramilitary training.
On his profiles on a social networking Web site, Cross cited Nazis as heroes, including Nazi commando leader Otto Skorzeny as well as Reinhard Heydrich, chief architect of the Holocaust. He gave his occupation as SS-Obersturmführer and prominently displayed an English translation of the motto of the Waffen SS.
The point is that the concerns brought up in this report in the wake of the James Adkisson and Richard Poplawski shootings, and the discovery of a right-wing would-be Dirty Bomber in Main are legitimate. They aren't simply "imagining things" or unfairly targeting innocent conservatives, simply for being conservatives.
What I'd like to know is why Mainstream Conservatives, including John Boenher who just took a question today of "Whether Janet Napolitano should be Fired or Resign?" without flinching can't seem to recognize the difference between rank and file conservatives with honest legitimate principles and murderous terrorists like McVeigh, Adkisson, Kopp, Rudolph, Cummings and Poplawski?
When did the Extremists become their Constituency? When did they join the Neo-Nazi Party?
Vyan
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