Make sure to order Eric Alterman's new book - "Liberal Media? What a Crock!"

Or, order Liberal Media? - A Rock Opera by Bruce Springsteen here

CalPundit on why he can't be a Republican - the undisguised bigotry against gays/lesbians.

Well, Andrew Sullivan's pledge week apparently gave him $80,000. Despite the overwhelming generosity of my readers, I didn't make $80,000. The terrorists have won! NOOOOOO!

LA Times has more:

Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, called the detentions doubly disturbing because "a lot of the Iranians are Jews who fled Iran because of persecution, and now they are undergoing similar persecution here.... This is just terrible."

Attorney Ban Al-Wardi, who saw 14 of her 20 clients arrested when she went with them to the registration, said that although everyone understands the need to protect the nation against terrorist attacks, the government's recent action went too far.

"All of our fundamental civil rights have been violated by these actions," she said. "I don't know how far this is going to go before people start speaking up. This is a very dangerous precedent we are setting. What's to stop Americans from being treated like this when they travel overseas?"

Mikhaela has some too. Happy (almost) graduation!

The Howell Raines Times hasn't reported on the INS roundup, but it does report on the flip-flop regarding the requirement that Armenians join in the registration process (which is limited to men of a certain age from a select group of countries), reminding us that they're a Christian country so they don't count. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were added at the last minute.


OOPS, they did report here...

Uppity Negro has some thoughts.



and Brad DeLong has a question.

Mother Jones has the Trent Lott timeline o' bigotry.

Howard Owens has stuff up about the CNP.

I never responded to Instapundit's silly point here:

I would have thought, though, that "fundamentalists" -- even though their agenda differs from mine, or from Paul Krugman's -- have as much right to form "pressure groups" as anyone else. Does Krugman disagree? It appears that he does. Or am I wrong here?


What is it with people on the Right that they always assume someone is trying to silence them or argue that they don't have a right to exist? I can't speak for Krugman (unless of course I am him, in which case I always do), but what reasonable person thought Krugman was saying such a thing? The CNP has counted as its members individuals in Congress, some rich business interests, and quite a few people whose avowed goal is to destroy constitutional democracy as we know it, tear up the constitution, and establish a Christian Theocracy. Sounds like advocates of treason to me. No joke. Now, that doesn't mean all members hold such views, but given the very prominent people who are members, and who speak to this group, it seems very appropriate to try to shine a little light on this very well financed "interest group" as it is appropriate to do for every other interest group.

The fact that then candidate Bush spoke to the group and the tape of the talk was disappeared at the very least serves to fuel the theories of conspiracy mongers like myself.

But, what should I expect from people who ignore the fact that the Washington Times is owned by a messianic billionaire, who also is connected to the CNP through its founder LaHaye and others, and staffed with neo-confederates.


UPDATE: sofla says:

It is considered paranoid to mention that this Sun Moon guy has lost billions in his Washington Times publishing company (including Insight Magazine), with no commercial viability in prospect, ever, and staffed it up with his co-religionists, explicitly to influence the direction of US policy, and further his aim of bringing the US, like the rest of the world, under his Messiahship. Moon has said the US is Satanic, Satan's spawn, and its system needs to be destroyed. He has co-opted the religious right by financially bailing out Falwell's Liberty University from the brink of bankruptcy, and bought the endorsement of Bush 41 with millions of dollars of honoraria.

Except for these troubling facts, I'm sure the WaTimes is beyond reproach, and trustworthy as an objective news source.

I'm trying to see if there's any defense funds being set up for the victims of the roundups. If anyone comes across them let me know so I can link them.

Ailes has up Norah Vincent's latest.

Oh. My. God.

Flashback.

The funny thing is - Norah wasn't accused of plagiarism by a vengeful blogger, she was accused of plagiarism by a fellow Real Published Paid Journalist in an email to a vengeful blogger.[UPDATE: well, specifically she was accused of "stealing" by Pierce]


In any case, maybe Norah should read her own book:

$2 million? That's money down the drain.

Here's more on the roundups.

Reza Tabib was indignant that his friend Efran Haj Rasoli -- a 19-year-old Irvine Valley College student -- was taken into custody Monday because he lacked a residency card. Tabib said the INS wrote Rasoli a letter indicating it had been approved in 2000 but that because of INS backlogs, it had not arrived.

This is sounding really bad.
And more.

Traplci, of Santa Ana, said none of the men had expected any problem. All have lived in this country for years, and all are in various stages of obtaining their green cards. Most had received INS letters telling them their applications had been accepted. "These people who were at the INS office came from Syria, Iraq, Iran and other countries," he said. "

bad,bad,bad.

fuckers.

More.

The move shocked many foreigners and their lawyers, who claimed the INS had changed its established practice of not detaining people until their green card applications were processed.

Immigration officials said they have always tried to detain immigrants who overstayed their visas, but didn't always have the resources to find them.

"This is not entrapment," Adele Fasano, district director of San Diego's INS office said. "These are people who have chosen to violate the laws of our country, and they will be held accountable for that."

fuckers, fuckers, fuckers.

One comparison Bob Somerby has been hitting recently is the disparate treatment of Gore's highly priced consultant compared to McCain's highly priced consultant. Gore was mocked for both the price he paid and the advice he was imagined to be receving.

Gore's consultant was paid the whopping sum of $15,000 per month. She was the moderate feminist Naomi Wolf, who while not being of the "backlash" variety, is hardly a radical by any stretch. Presumably, though we can't really be sure, Ms. Wolf was paid to help Gore reach out to women voters.

McCain's was paid $20,000. He was Richard Quinn, publisher of Southern Partisan magazine. Presumably, though we can't really be sure, Mr. Quinn was hired to help McCain reach out to neo-confederate bigot voters.

Which one do you remember hearing about in election 2000?

Buncha 50-60 year olds regretting their votes now.

The Bush administration and its pals in the corporate suites are pulling off just such a filch right now. In a truly mean-spirited retreat from the principles of hard work and loyalty, they're setting up a raid on middle-class pensions.

"Radical. Anti-worker," fumed Rep. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.). He calls it another assault by "Enron culture" CEOs whose campaign contributions hold sway in the administration. "It is going to cost employees dearly," warned his California Democrat colleague Rep. George Miller.

Indeed, the General Accounting Office projected that workers could wind up with reductions of 20% to 50% in the monthly pensions they worked for and planned for.


.....
A few years back, the idea of doing away with traditional retirement plans in favor of cash-balance pensions caught on in a big way, and as many as 700 companies imposed the switch on their 8 million or so workers. But they ran into trouble. Employees began to understand what was happening: Older, long-term workers realized that they were the targets. And why not? They were the ones about to retire and put a drain on company profits. They began filing lawsuits and complaints, and the Clinton administration imposed a moratorium on the swindle.

bugger

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hundreds of Iranian and other Middle East citizens were in southern California jails on Wednesday after coming forward to comply with a new rule to register with immigration authorities only to wind up handcuffed and behind bars.

Shocked and frustrated Islamic and immigrant groups estimate that more than 500 people have been arrested in Los Angeles, neighboring Orange County and San Diego in the past three days under a new nationwide anti-terrorism program. Some unconfirmed reports put the figure as high as 1,000.

The arrests sparked a demonstration by hundreds of Iranians outside a Los Angeles immigration office. The protesters carried banners saying "What's next? Concentration camps?" and "What happened to liberty and justice?."

A spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service said no numbers of people arrested would be made public. A Justice Department spokesman could not be reached for comment.


...

One activist said local jails were so overcrowded that the immigrants could be sent to Arizona, where they could face weeks or months in prisons awaiting hearings before immigration judges or deportation.


..

The Iranian protesters said many of those detained were victims of official delays in processing visa and green card requests.

"My father, they just took him in," one young man told reporters. "They've been treating him like an animal. They put him in a room with, like, 50 other people and no bed or anything."

Khan said one of those in jail was a doctor, who was being sponsored for U.S. citizenship when his sponsor died.

If the INS were a perfectly well-functioning machine without any gray areas in the regulations or time delays in the processing, this type of thing might be warranted. But, knowing many people of varying immigration classifications I understand well what a nightmare it can be. Aside from the normal bureaucratic delays, I know people who have been given what amounts to illegal instructions by their current or future employers with regards to the proper procedures for attaining visas. There are many people who are nominally "legal" but for whatever reason are somewhere between the proper bits of paper, and here is where discretion by the INS employees is appropriate. Since 9/11, the "loopholes" in immigration, which were really just band-aids and gum used to mend and fill the cracks of a ridiculous system by the INS employees, have all been closed up and practically anyone could be found in violation.

Engaging in mass roundups of a particular ethnic group can only be counterproductive on so many fronts. It sends a message not to come forward - ever - and to drive people underground. It creates resentment among their relatives and sends a signal that they are second class citizens as their relatives on expired tourist or student visas aren't simply escorted to the airport, as a European might, but thrown in jail. And, all of this needlessly. If these people needed to be deported there were ways to do it other than rounding them up suddenly, en masse, ensuring that an overloaded processing system remains overloaded leaving them in limbo - in jail - for who knows how long.

Wyeth pulls a David Brooks and goes and visits an actual Red Sate (well, in cyberspace anyway).

Ignite...shitstorm...NOW!

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Former President Clinton said Wednesday it is "pretty hypocritical" of Republicans to criticize incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott for stating publicly what he said the GOP does "on the back roads every day."

"How do they think they got a majority in the South anyway?" Clinton said outside a business luncheon he was attending. "I think what they are really upset about is that he made public their strategy."

He added: "They try to suppress black voting, they ran on the Confederate flag in Georgia and South Carolina, and from top to bottom the Republicans supported it."
..


The former president then said, "He just embarrassed them by saying in Washington what they do on the back roads every
day."

He accused Republicans of "trying to run black voters away from the polls" in states such as Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida.
Clinton also cited recent gubernatorial elections in Georgia and South Carolina, won by Republicans.

...

"I think the way the Republicans have treated Senator Lott is pretty hypocritical since right now their policy is, in my view,
inimical to everything that this country stands for," Clinton said.

The sound you hear is that of the squeals of self-righteous fury being angrily tapped into 5000 Blackberries in DC bars.

So, any righty bloggers been talking about the race-baiting that was the manufactured South Dakota voter "fraud?"

David E. beats up on Abigail Thernstrom.


As does Brad DeLong.

Leah A., who needs her own blog ( maybe her and Digby could team up? - ed. I like it!) says:

This is an area as ripe for some left of center blogosphere deconstruction as was race a la the Lott comment.

The attitudes being expressed in this material, radically looney though they are, have been tolerated on the right, and to a shocking extent, those who hold them or tolerate them, have been accorded the status of unexceptional, non-extremist, mainstream commentators.

Routinely, when Pat Robertson is interviewed on any of the cable news shows, he is never asked any questions that even begin to explore the right wing radicalism that is on copious display on The 700 Club. On one show some years ago, while defending a Judge who likes to say a Christian prayer in court before a case is heard, Robertson insisted he'd have no problem with a Moslem judge reading from the Koran, though he was pleased as a nice cup of Christian punch to note there are no such judges anywhere in the US of A. A week later, there was a filmed "news" report on the show on the growth of Islam in America in which Islam was identified as a Satanic religion, the symbols of which Christians had to be on guard to avoid, including visiting mosques, or having Islamic art in the home. We sometimes forget, because of the Reverend attached to their names, how often these guys lie.

Nowhere in the Constitution can one find the words "Christian," "Christian nation," "Christ," "Jesus," "salvation," "our Lord," "the Lord." Nor do the great majority of Americans wish they were there.

And as for the constantly referenced words in the Declaration of Independence, "endowed by their creator," note that this is one of those truths that is "self-evident," i.e., not true because it is part of some sacred text, not true because it is "biblically based," true because humans can reason their way to its truth. The creator, who has endowed mankind with a nature that acknowledges these inalienable rights, could be a Christian, Moslem, or Jewish God, it can be evolution, it can be natural law; after all, most people don't think they created themselves and are willing to acknowledge, if nothing more, that a long chain of DNA stretching back eons preceded them. The source of the universal appeal of the Declaration around the world I'd locate in its strict neutrality on the question of exactly what kind of creator created us, even if in Jefferson's mind, it was a Christian one.

Up to now there's been no cost to politicians who play footsie with this lethally divisive desire to Christianize America, not because such a movement is supported by any kind of American majority. If most Americans really understood what these guys are talking about, they'd be flabbergasted. Bringing America back to its "Christian roots" may play in Texas, (and by no means everywhere in Texas) but I'm betting that its a distinctly minority view.

Sullivan, Bennett, Ingraham, Will, who's already embarrassed by the creationist branch of Christian conservatism, the "Standard" boys, are just as vulnerable to some hard questioning of their attitudes in this area as they are on race.

And yet, through-out the liberal media, liberals are constantly put on the defensive in regards to religion.
Time for that to end. As with race, time to start attacking what the other side doesn't want us to know about what they're really all about.