Democrat Who Blasted “Right Wing Extremism” Report Called For Crackdown On Right Wing Extremism
Okay, here’s a fun little postscript to the bizarre controversy over the Department of Homeland Security’s assessment of the threat posed by “right wing extremists.”
A Democrat, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, is now trying to grab some of the media attention on this story for himself, aggressively criticizing the Obama administration over the “right wing extremists” report, even though the controversy fomented by the right on this is largely bogus.
But it turns out that some time ago, Thompson himself aggressively called for the Department of Homeland Security to do much more to crack down on “right wing extremists.”
In response to this week’s controversy, Thompson, the chair of the Homeland Security Committee, has professed himself “dumbfounded” by the DHS report. He claimed that it “appears to raise significant issues involving the privacy and civil liberties of many Americans — including war veterans.”
Naturally, a Democrat going along with the conservative assault on Obama’s alleged snooping on right-wingers was bound to get lots of media attention, and earned him a big plug on MSNBC this morning.
But as ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee in 2005, Thompson put out a whole report calling on DHS to do more to crack down on right wing extremism. You can read the report right here.
“DHS must reassess the threat posed by right-wing domestic terrorists and revise its long term planning to address this risk,” the report warns. It adds that “the risk posed by right-wing extremists” should prompt DHS to “give higher priority to this threat.”
D’oh!
Seems like any news report airing Thompson’s criticism — and there will be many of them — should mention this rather salient fact.
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Maybe re-education camps aren’t such a bad idea after all?
MediaMatters threw cold water on the argument that Joe Scarborough and other conservative clowns have been making about DHS “targeting veterans” by pointing out that DHS refers to a 2008 report from the FBI that talked about extremist groups recruiting veterans. Where was their outrage at Bush?
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http://mediamatters.org/items/200904160006?f=h_top
Another journalism fail by the Moonie Times
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I swear reading comprehension is a dying art I guess.
Well done, greg.
Another day, another fake outrage.
Congress is a mess -both sides of the aisle.
You know what this is right? Its Thompson covering his *** so as not to give Republicans a political argument against him. I am reminded of this reading Glenzilla today. Its remarkable just how upfront Democratic Leaders in Congress were in saying they were voting for FISA last year just to take away a political argument and so Democrats could win more seats in Congress. That tells you how much the bloviating by the right is feared by elected officials on the left and how in the end it ends up ruining any hope for honest discourse. And in this case comes back to bite you on the ***. Here is the Glenzilla piece by the way.
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http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/16/nsa/index.html
Compare and contrast.
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This is Peter King claiming that everyone would be in arms had DHS targeted Muslims which is a favorite claim by wingnuts to imply that Democrats don’t take terrorism seriously and to link all muslims to terrorism.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILAm2NVCPGU
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This is Michele Bachmann casting aspersions and lying on Congressman Keith Ellison (the imams were not coming to see him) as well as using over the top rhetoric that these particular Muslims who have since been found to have been doing absolutely nothing wrong and been issued an apology were “using the same pattern as 9-11 hijackers”
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http://tinyurl.com/c3knn4
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Greg maybe you could call Congressman King and give him the chance to denounce and reject Michele Bachmann’s smears against Congressman Ellison.
sg – that’s how Glenzilla sees it and he’s not always 100% infallible, either. He’s not been completely open about FISA right from the start. Glenn has his own axe to grind, I just don’t know what it is exactly,but I do know he’s been disingenuous at times on this subject.
He has acted like Bush thought all this up and that’s not so.
Tena
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I didn’t say I agreed with everything in Glenzilla’s article but on the subject of WHY the Democratic leadership voted for FISA its hard to argue against an exact quote from them.
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