Redstate

"Beating dead horses with flaming scarecrows since 1969."

Not in my mind.

The best account of Oklahoma City in my opinion, AMERICAN TERRORIST pretty well establishes that McVeigh had some kind of psychotic break after he left the service when he failed to qualify for the special forces. The SPLC is just a fundraiser in the same tradition as NARAL claims of abortion clinic bombers behind every bush (or Bush). The fact the New York Times didn't even fact check this nonsense is all you need to know about the state of that newspaper.

• No more announcements of gay nuptials.
  
• The Ethicist (in the Sunday NYT magazine) would give advice consistent with Sharia law.
  
• Really, really challenging crosswords.

That's about it.

DOD investigator: the Private Dick hired by SPLC or NYT to 'investigate" the Pentagon.  Think Terry Lenzner or Tony Pellicano.

This is exactly what you described--a press release about a press release. Include the New York Times with the SPLC among liberal institutions that have become part of the kook Left fringe.

SPLC's main purpose seems to be ensuring that Morris Dees et al. need never know poverty.

really can't enlist because they are mostly illegal. We do know that Crips and Bloods and the Chicago gang, Black P Stone Nation, have encouraged members to enlist. Akbar, the guy who blew up 3/101's CP at Camp Pennsylvania is Nation of Islam.

We don't know if other leaders are encouraging enlistment because SPLC isn't interested unless it can raise money from the anti-Klan sources it used to thrive on.

If the NY Times was secretly in the pay of Al Qaeda, how would it act differently?

We could make a list.  But it would be a short one.

soldiers while awaiting to go to Iraq, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or Nation of Islam? I don't read too much into an isolated incident such as this one, but if I wanted to drum up money I could turn it into a fundraising appeal along with other anecdotes. This is what the SPLC did, as it has done in the past in other areas. Of course, the SPLC report gets NYT exposure because it fits with the paper's template of the American soldier as a hate-filled, murderous bigot.

Here on RedState several months ago who spoke to me via email about his fears over the Minutemen who I think was actually working for SPLC.  His fears were basically in the same tone and the same vein, and this is one of the new techniques the antiwar left is using to attack the armed forces.  Their main strategy, which was played out on the 9th Circuit and resulted in a loss, didn't work because the culmination of that strategy would have led to a reinstituion of the draft.  Having failed at that, the fallback plan is to discredit volunteer recruits.  

And so the Left continues to work to force America to lose the war.  Whenever was it not so?

From reading the linked SPLC piece, it is strictly conjecture based on the anonymous comments of one "army investigator". It is shameful, absolutely shameful,to base such a smear story on that basis, and it is incredibly unprofessional of the NYT to parrot that. The NYT has apparently abandoned any pretense of journalistic integrity (I cannot imagine the dreaded Washington Post running this story).

The SPLC is a communist group run by a child molester. It sickens me to even see them discussed with the slightest notion of legitimacy.

So true. For non-lawyers, and for consumers, SPLC probably creates more poverty than they "solve." After all, somebody has to pay for their shakedown.

I hate to break it to the guy, but every new recruit in basic looks like a skinhead...

This is so funny. Not too long ago, we were being told that our miltiary was filling up with the poor and MINORITIES. Now the NY Times is claiming that it's filling up with skinheads.

It's hard to see why a racist would join a military that integrated long before virtually any other segment of our society, a military where those giving him orders are likely to be members of the very minority he hates.

That's what happens to you when you become a bigot. Any criticism of those you hate becomes valid, no matter how bizarre or inconsistent with a previous rationale for hating them.

you need to look a bit deeper into Dees background.

The Montgomery Advertiser, Feb. 13-14, 1994, said that according to several former black employees, the SPLC was "more like a plantation".  They also reported that all but one of 13 former black employees complained about experiencing racial problems during their employment.

Later that same year, the Birmingham News also investigated Dees and the SPLC.  They found a Harvard Law School grad who interned at the SPLC.  Here is what she told them:

"I would definitely say that there was not a single black employee with whom I spoke who was happy to be working there." "As I was told, they don't need Black people telling them how to handle Black issues."  

Back in 1961 when Freedom Riders were beaten by a white mob at a Montgomery bus station, Dees and his law partner, Millard Fuller, expressed openly their sympathies and support for what had happened at the bus station.

When one of the men charged with beating the Freedom Riders came to their office for legal representation, Dees and Fuller took the case. The legal fee was paid by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizen's Council. [The Progressive, July 1988]

So Dees' motto has been do as I say, not as I do.

This article will give various individuals the rhetorical cover they need to stop pretending that they actually like the military.  That'll be good for them - the effort they put into holding it all back must be shortening their lifespans, the poor miserable [expletive deleted]s - and it'll be certainly good for us.

Checking into some of the figures in the report wouldn't be that hard.

The short version: The New York Times saw a chance to take a shot at the Department of Defense, and was more focused on that objective than in doing a real news story.

all his adult life. His early work to support the 1964 Civil Rights Act and so forth was extraordinary. However, as the United States moved into the post-Jim Crow era Dees and his ilk found it hard to justify their constant begging.

A good example was the transformation of "Klanwatch" into the "Intelligence Project." As the number of kooks who were associated with the KKK fell below the number of contributors on the Klanwatch fundraiser list, Dees and others found it increasingly hard to explain why millions of dollars were needed to "investigate" an essentially defunct organization. In addition, claims of financial improprieties began to surface about this time.

Attention then turned to neo-Nazis and skinheads. As it became apparent these groups, while still dangerous, also were about extinct, the Intelligence Project and SPLC went off the deep end and globbed onto whatever the boogeyman du juor happened to be.

At first it was the Internet, because the SPLC claimed it could disseminate hatred far and wide. As the public became 'Net savy and realized those claims were outrageously overblown, the Intelligence Project looked for a new windmill to tilt for dollars. In the wake of Oklahoma City, it found the new and improved immediate threat to America--militias. After most members of these various groups died of heart disease after walking a mile or two in the woods, focus had to center elsewhere. It briefly was turned on the Minuteman Project until it became exceedingly clear that group, regardless of how people viewed it, was neither racist nor xenophobic.

Today, the SPLC basically is indistinguishable from the Bush-bashing Left, and focuses on the Administration's alleged abor abuses and claims that the military is a racist hotbed. It is nothing more than another tentacle in the Democratic Party's cash-grabbing machinery.

So I see the Southern Poverty Law Center as the perfect metaphor for the American Left: born with good intentions in the early Sixties, it itself has become part of the kook fringe of society that begs for money and finds it increasingly hard to invent enemies to justify its existence. In a few years, SPLC officially will be little more than the Democratic Underground. It is a tragic tale of how good intentions degenerated into raw greed and opportunism. It is the American Left's John Birch Society.

I also read the SPLC report before I decided against critiqueing it in detail. On the timeline, if you apply the post hoc ergo propter hoc test there are a lot fewer instances than they allege.

For instance, there is no evidence that either Tim McVeigh or Eric Rudolph had their later beliefs when they entered the armed forces or while they were on active duty.

I also found their studious refusal to address the presence of other hate groups was a tad on the dishonest side.

They need to be tossed out ASAP.  If some of those who are claiming to be soldiers, etc., aren't really soldiers, then they need to be outed as that anti-war activist who claimed to be a Ranger was outed.  The Department of Defense is apparently waiting for overt acts, which is reasonable, although I'd say that setting up a web page is getting close to that line of an overt act.

The number of serious incidents is very low (I coutnd fifteen involving active-duty troops over the 53 years of the SPLC's timeline).  That said, in fairness to the SPLC, I think it is clear from what the neo-Nazis/white nationalists are writing that they are trying to infiltrate the military (Yes, I read the SPLC report - I'm not going to patronize NYTimes.com unless it is absolutely unavoidable), and as such, some caution should be raised about this.

It looks like there are failures to keep them out of the military (and some recrutiers ought to be in trouble for helping them cover it up), but it also looks like a number of those failures are being addressed through the system.

All in all, the New York Times is clearly trying to use this report to make the military look bad.  The SPLC report, in and of itself, doesn't have anything that seems to be unfair on its face.

After watching the Drive-by Media's version of today's news and their endless drivel of tabloid news tonight, I turned several times to Geraldo At Large. (Yes, I need a life.) He had a story on there about skinheads and gang members in the military. I watched for a couple minutes before I went back to looking at Vanna White. (This life has its moments though.) I thought that was pretty much off the wall even for Geraldo.

Come to redstate this evening to get a different feel of what's going on and come to find out that the skinhead story came from the NY Times. Now is that a coincidence or what???  

Geraldo went to Iraq again a month or two ago to be with the troops. I suspect he wanted to show that he really isn't that biased in regard to the military. Its like my Congressman, Dennis Kucinich, greeting the 325th Marine Brigade when they lost they lost six guys at the same time. Its another one of his publicity stunts. Its not about respect for our guys in uniform, its about gaining credibility for their attacks on the war.  Anything to get W and the Republicans. Democrats for Defeat.

Anyone who has the time can find so much dirt on Dees and his organization.  It is shameful of the media to tout this guy as some civil rights guru, when his personal and professional life indicate otherwise.  His crusades against the KKK must be compared with the SPLC's hiring of only a handful of black attorneys since their inception.  Has he heard of affirmative action?  Anyway, the list on this guy could go on and on.  

If he's not racist in his hiring of lawyers, that's to his credit if anything.

There is no doubt the New York Times is doing their fair share of work providing support for the war effort.

There is reasonable doubt that they are supporting our side.

Say that there are two races: Enlisted Men and Officers.

You're either one or t'other.

But, as you say, the plural of anecdote is not data.

I'd be willing to bet that we don't see a lot of people who belong to extreme left-wing organizations like Mecha, MS-13, the Black Panthers, Nation of Islam, etc. talking to recruiters, much less volunteering to serve, in the first place.  From 1968-1975, the far left was quite vociferous in demanding it not be obliged to support the military or its mission.  In fact, several such activists are quoted actively encoruaging refusal to serve here.  In essence, they have opted out, and that would tend to exclude them from any pool.

On the other hand, as the SPLC points out in its report, we not only have various neo-Nazi leaders encouraging enlistment in the service in on the record, but they are coaching people on how to get past the efforts to screen them out (don't get tattoos, don't listen to the music, don't keep literature, etc.).

For those reasons, I'm not surprised at this disparity in this report, and I don't think the disparity is prima facie proof of dishonesty on the patr of SPLC.

In the Times article, they quote someone names Barfield who is described as a "Department of Defense investigator" who says that parents are already worried about their kids "signing up and dying in Iraq". Somehow, I find this quote on the part of a DOD official to be rather suspect.

Just a few years ago the news was reporting that gangs were taking over the military, staking out their claims to different areas of aircraft carriers, etc. The officers had certain parts of the ship that "they don't go in", and the work areas were divided like the prison on OZ, ie; Vice Lords ran the galley, Spanish Cobras ran the laundry, etc. In law enforcement, we get a free copy of Dee's "Intelligence Report" magazine every month, which, in theory, is supposed to track hate groups of any kind, and actually used to. But in the last 3 years, the mag. decieded that anyone who opposed high taxes is a racist person of hate, and the mag. has become useless to us in tracking the Klan, etc.

Is that nearly every single line of the report was, "the group said" "the report claims" "the group said".  The whole article is really nothing but a press release on a press release.

While I think stories like this are news, they need something more to actually be stories, not just one group's claims. I agree that there should have been some sort of effort to talk to someone else besides one woman at DOD who had no comment.  And actual investigative journalism to probe the claims?  What a novel idea...

but I fear there is a kernel of truth in what you say.  Since the Gulf War and moreso since 9/11 the soldier has been the quintessential American hero (firemen and occasionally policemen notwithstanding).  As the cog in the military-industrial complex, a 'good German,' the soldier is a difficult man for many lefties to love.  The proliferation of stories about soldiers gone wild over the last two or three weeks is either indicative of or soon to be a cover for an ebbing of support for the military on the left.  

There is no such thing as a 325th Marine Brigade.

You are right. It is the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, 4th Marine Division with their headquarters in Brookpark, Ohio. Semper Fi