Dr. Who's Reading Room

Arizona's us-versus-them brand of politics »

The state House of Representatives passed a law requiring that presidential candidates prove they were born in the United States, a nod to “birthers” skeptical that Obama was born in the country. The bill died in the state Senate after it became the subject of national ridicule.

The most dramatic step was Pearce’s bill, SB 1070, requiring police officers to investigate the status of people they legally stop and think may be illegal immigrants. Republicans now vow to introduce legislation challenging the right to citizenship of children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants and checking the immigration status of parents of children in public schools.

There has been heated rhetoric on both sides — some critics of SB 1070 circulated an image of the state flag with a swastika on it — but people who have defied the conservative wave and hard-line stance on immigration are the ones who have reported the most dangerous harassment. One of the people killed Saturday, U.S. District Judge John Roll, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, was given protection by the U.S. Marshals Service in response to death threats he received after ruling that a lawsuit by illegal immigrants against a rancher could go forward.

Giffords’ office was vandalized after she voted for the healthcare bill last year. Her Republican challenger in November, former Marine Sgt. Jesse Kelly, held a fundraiser where donors were offered the chance to shoot an M-16 to “help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office” In a statement after the shooting, Kelly said, “Senseless acts of violence such as this have no place in American politics.”

(Source: azspot)

— July 2008: A gunman named Jim David Adkisson, agitated at how “liberals” are “destroying America,” walks into a Unitarian Church and opens fire, killing two churchgoers and wounding four others.

— October 2008: Two neo-Nazis are arrested in Tennessee in a plot to murder dozens of African-Americans, culminating in the assassination of President Obama.

— December 2008: A pair of “Patriot” movement radicals — the father-son team of Bruce and Joshua Turnidge, who wanted “to attack the political infrastructure” — threaten a bank in Woodburn, Oregon, with a bomb in the hopes of extorting money that would end their financial difficulties, for which they blamed the government. Instead, the bomb goes off and kills two police officers. The men eventually are convicted and sentenced to death for the crime.

— December 2008: In Belfast, Maine, police discover the makings of a nuclear “dirty bomb” in the basement of a white supremacist shot dead by his wife. The man, who was independently wealthy, reportedly was agitated about the election of President Obama and was crafting a plan to set off the bomb.

— January 2009: A white supremacist named Keith Luke embarks on a killing rampage in Brockton, Mass., raping and wounding a black woman and killing her sister, then killing a homeless man before being captured by police as he is en route to a Jewish community center.

— February 2009: A Marine named Kody Brittingham is arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate President Obama. Brittingham also collected white-supremacist material.

— April 2009: A white supremacist named Richard Poplawski opens fire on three Pittsburgh police officers who come to his house on a domestic-violence call and kills all three, because he believed President Obama intended to take away the guns of white citizens like himself. Poplawski is currently awaiting trial.

— April 2009: Another gunman in Okaloosa County, Florida, similarly fearful of Obama’s purported gun-grabbing plans, kills two deputies when they come to arrest him in a domestic-violence matter, then is killed himself in a shootout with police.

— May 2009: A “sovereign citizen” named Scott Roeder walks into a church in Wichita, Kansas, and assassinates abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.

— June 2009: A Holocaust denier and right-wing tax protester named James Von Brunn opens fire at the Holocaust Museum, killing a security guard.

— February 2010: An angry tax protester named Joseph Ray Stack flies an airplane into the building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas. (Media are reluctant to label this one “domestic terrorism” too.)

— March 2010: Seven militiamen from the Hutaree Militia in Michigan and Ohio are arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate local police officers with the intent of sparking a new civil war.

— March 2010: An anti-government extremist named John Patrick Bedell walks into the Pentagon and opens fire, wounding two officers before he is himself shot dead.

— May 2010: A “sovereign citizen” from Georgia is arrested in Tennessee and charged with plotting the violent takeover of a local county courthouse.

— May 2010: A still-unidentified white man walks into a Jacksonville, Fla., mosque and sets it afire, simultaneously setting off a pipe bomb.

— May 2010: Two “sovereign citizens” named Jerry and Joe Kane gun down two police officers who pull them over for a traffic violation, and then wound two more officers in a shootout in which both of them are eventually killed.

— July 2010: An agitated right-winger and convict named Byron Williams loads up on weapons and drives to the Bay Area intent on attacking the offices of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, but is intercepted by state patrolmen and engages them in a shootout and armed standoff in which two officers and Williams are wounded.

— September 2010: A Concord, N.C., man is arrested and charged with plotting to blow up a North Carolina abortion clinic. The man, 26-year—old Justin Carl Moose, referred to himself as the “Christian counterpart to (Osama) bin Laden” in a taped undercover meeting with a federal informant.

“

—	Eighteen examples of right-wing domestic terrorism detailed by freelance journalist and author David Neiwert (via Digby) (Source: diadoumenos)

greenstate:

WAR?