The Tea Party is a Hate Group (According to SPLC)

The Southern Poverty Law Center has issued a report in which they conclude that hate groups are on the decline.  Of course, some would say that the SPLC itself is a hate group, but that's not the point.  I'm more interested in what SPLC says is a "hate group":

Demoralized by the reelection of President Barack Obama but calmed by Washington’s failure to enact new gun control laws, hate groups are on the decline in the United States. 

That’s according to a new report out Tuesday from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which found that the number of hate groups in the U.S. declined by seven percent in 2013. After a dramatic rise following Obama’s first election and the worst of the recession, the number of anti-government “patriot” group identified by the SPLC also fell 19 percent between 2012 and 2013.

Anti-government, patriots...?

What does that mean, exactly?  Patriots are hate groups?  You're a hate group if you don't expect big-government to take care of you cradle to grave?

Advocates of the Second Amendment are apparently haters:

The author of the new report, SPLC senior fellow Mark Potok, said momentum on the far-right experienced a marked turnaround in 2013 when it became clear that congressional efforts to enact significant gun control legislation would fail. “Guns and gun control are so much at the heart of the radical right,” Potok sad. “That looked like an issue that was going to become white hot, but it essentially died and went away.”

It's as if Janet Napolitano is here again calling us all "right-wing extremists."

Naturally the SPLC defines the Tea Party as a "hate group"...

The power of hate groups is largely rooted in their ability to exist as an alternative to mainstream political debate. In recent years, as local, state and national political figures affiliated with the tea party movement have adopted some views that previously only existed outside the mainstream political system, the far-right has struggled to rally support for its organizations. Various scandals within the hierarchies of some hate groups, as well as deaths and arrests of some leaders, have also hurt organizations’ ability to recruit and build their ranks.

...because having a belief in the Constitution and in limited government interference of your daily life in matters such as education, health care, and privacy is probably not "mainstream."

Honestly, it's enough to make me dust off my Tea Party t-shirt, call C.L. Bryant for a chat, and organize a rally.

SPLC senior fellow Mark Potok suggests that if immigration becomes a hot issue in Congress that the Tea Party hate groups "will rise again."

One can only hope.

Offered Without Comment...

Via Drudge

Do You Feel Safer Now?

While the report from top intelligence officials that a new terrorist attack is imminent is frightening, I don't think it's surprising.

From Day One this administration has seemingly gone out of its way to portray this country as soft on terror, beginning with the Executive Order to close Gitmo. And no, I'm not buying that bunk that Gitmo is a "recruiting tool." Even if the specter of Gitmo is invoked by anyone recruiting for al-Qaeda, they really don't need Gitmo to recruit extremists who hate us.

What does sort of surprise me, and I guess it shouldn't, is that Janet Napolitano didn't even attend the House Homeland Security Committee hearing last week to clarify the actions of her department regarding the Christmas Day bomber. Instead she sent a stand-in while she was in her office "consulting with members of an unspecified think-tank."

Didn't she think it was important to be there? Not to cast stones at her stand-in, who I am sure was probably adequate, or at least as adequate as Napolitano, but it sends a message that she just doesn't think it's important.

Maybe she'll pay more attention to this prediction by top intelligence officials:

The nation’s top intelligence officials warned Congress on Tuesday that terrorists are “certain” to attempt another attack on the U.S. within the coming months...It was echoed by Blair, FBI Director Robert Mueller, acting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Intelligence and Research John Dinger, and the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess, Jr.

As I said before, not surprising. What really scares me, though, is who is in charge. The entire National Security front leaves me feeling a little insecure.

"This 'case' tees up like a slam-dunk."

Andy McCarthy is making the same point that I, and probably others, was making earlier today with regard to the Underpants Terrorist. Since this administration treats terrorists like shoplifters, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab will likely exercise his right to remain silent, lawyer up, and reveal nothing to investigators.

Imagine the information this clod could provide if he were actually treated like a terrorist! Training with al Qaeda in Yemen is bound to be somewhat interesting to interrogators. Any knowledge of future attacks? Names of active terrorists? Locations? Anything? No, as a result, we'll get nothing but, as McCarthy puts it, a "success" in the books of the Obama administration for catching a terrorist:

Here, no thanks to the government, the plane was not destoyed, and we won't get to the bottom of the larger conspiracy (enabling the likes of Napolitano to say there's no indication of a larger plot — much less one launched by an international jihadist enterprise) because the guy got to lawyer up rather than be treated like a combatant and subjected to lengthy interrogation. But the terrorist will be convicted at trial (this "case" tees up like a slam-dunk), so the administration will put it in the books as a success ... just like the Clinton folks did after the '93 WTC bombers and the embassy bombers were convicted. In their minds, litigation success equals national security success.

Honestly, they don't get it and it scares the crap out of me.

Maybe this is what Napolitano meant when she said "the system worked." Maybe she's thinking about the future conviction. What a dolt.

Because, trust me, "the system" didn't work. And it isn't going to at this rate.