Idiocracy.

If you are not familiar with Mike Judge's Idiocracy, a fine cinematic depiction of the results of America's  dumbing down, you should watch it immediately! What follows are more tidbits of evidence that Judge has, at the very least, given a window view of our 500-years-from-now future, if not our present day.

Imagine a world where Snooki is celebrated as an Einstein, a world where her utterances are misunderstood, not because she is too stupid for the room, but because she is too smart for the room.

Imagine a world where several hundred thousand people a night camp in front of their TV Oracle Machine to watch Bill "My Brain Hurts" O'Reilly spoon-feed his wisdom, only to be followed on the air by a man named Sean, who sits wearing a suit jacket, a propeller beanie, and a tutu, joined by a talking parrot named Ann who plumbs the depths of her blackened mind to come up with the most outrageous freakshow squawking she can muster.

Imagine a world where Sarah Palin not only exists but is taken seriously by 50 million people who think she is fit to be a heartbeat way from leading the Free World.

This is Idiocracy, and we don't have to wait 500 years. The very existence of reality shows and fake news is proof enough. None of it is any different than Idiocracy. The movie's No. 1 reality show is named Ow! My Balls! It's a show that is nothing but what the title implies, a full hour of mental and physical mistakes that result in serious pain in "the man area."


Need more proof?


1. Beware the Girl Scouts of America!

To at least one man, Indiana Republican State Sen. Bob Morris, and his idiot supporters and staff, the Girl Scouts are a radical-feminist-lesbo organization that exists, not to sell cookies and gain merit badges, but to recruit and train future radical feminist lesbians. Gee, I thought that was what Lesbo Club in high school was for!


Morris believes that this nefarious organization also pushes an abortion lifestyle and, wait for it....... Communism.

*Facepalm*

What year is this? 1953? 2012? 2506? Morris also notes that the wicked Michelle Obama is an honorary president of the organization. Well, that proves it!

But wait, it gets "better".... Morris got ALL the info he needed from "well-informed constituents" and a “small amount of web-based research." He added that the Girl Scouts is the tactical arm of another evil Devil-approved organization that goes by the named of Planned Parenthood. Citizens, beware!

In addition, Morris is a man of his words. He has pulled his own two girls out of the Girl Scouts and they are now participating in another organization to "learn about values and principles that will not confuse their conservative Hoosier upbringing."

This is a prime example of idiocy.

How about this one:

Back in March, in the middle of March Madness, Southern Mississippi played Kansas State, a team that included a young man from Puerto Rico named Angel Rodriguez. Sounds fine so far, right? The problem began when members of the Southern Mississippi band stated chanting "Where's your green card?" at Rodriguez as he stepped to the foul line to shoot.

I don't know about you, but I knew that Puerto Rico is part of the United States by the time I left fourth grade. I guess admission standards are pretty low at ol' Southern Miss, but then, we do know that the people of Mississippi consider themselves to be part of the Confederacy and not these United States, so maybe we should be more understanding of willful stupidity.....

And one of the most stunning displays of stupid:
One of the state of Iowa's most ignorant, Rep. Steve King, went off on those squiggly energy-efficient lightbulbs at the CPAC hoedown in Washington earlier this year.

To insane Republicans everywhere, these energy-efficient bulbs serve multiple purposes. Depending on mood or paranoia level, they are the false idol, the fatted calf, or the Devil himself -- or even, conveniently, all of these rolled into one. Regarding being "forced" to use the new longer-lasting and more energy-efficient lightbulbs in Capitol building offices, King says:

    "I would screw them out and send the interns out to get me some of those good Edison lightbulbs. And those interns would come back sometimes empty-handed in tears, because they couldn't come up with a regular Edison lightbulb."

Making interns cry and threatening the fabric of the universe is all blamed on Nancy Pelosi and President Obama, the two biggest names in the Repug Pantheon of Evildoers. King refers to the Capitol janitors as Nancy Pelosi's Stasi troops, in reference to the Nazi-like East Germans secret police of the '50s and '60s. The first problem is that Pelosi isn't the speaker, so she doesn't determine what lightbulbs a moron like King can use. The second, and bigger, problem is: It was one George W. Bush who decreed the evil lightbulbs' use in Washington's government offices back when he was pretending to be president, in an effort to save taxpayer money. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a paranoid screed?

These guys are regressing this country... Lowering our collective IQ and reducing discourse to bumper sticker platitudes and bullshit.

Fuck em.

Hostess blames unions.

So the media is flogging the sad idea that unions caused another business to fold...

Another load of dingoes kidneys.

As economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research put it in his CEPR post yesterday (with background information provided by his colleagues Eileen Appelbaum and Mark Weisbrot:

It is not clear that [the workers] had a better route available to them. It is important to understand a bit about the history of Hostess in assessing whether the workers and their union made the right call.

Dean looked first at how Hostess wound up in bankruptcy originally.

Hostess has been relying on pretty much the same mix of products for decades. While other companies have sought to adjust to changing consumer tastes, Hostess still gets the vast majority of its revenue from a relatively small number of products that it has been selling in largely the same form since the sixties. This failure to innovate was the main reason that the company first went into bankruptcy in 2004.

There doesn't seem any question that Hostess needed new leadership. Instead, after five years in  bankruptcy, it got the private equity company Ripplewood Holdings, which took over in February 2009.

Remarkably, [Hostesss] exited bankruptcy with nearly $670 million in debt, almost 50 percent more than the $450 million it owed when it went into bankruptcy. Usually companies use bankruptcy to shed debt. With Hostess the opposite was true.

This meant that Ripplewood was taking a heavily leveraged gamble. If the company survived, it would get a very high return on its investment. However there was a strong likelihood that the company would not be able to make it given its extraordinary debt burden and the weakness of the economy.

Ripplewood first asked workers for concessions in August of 2011. The workers refused since they had made substantial concessions in 2008 to facilitate the exit from bankruptcy. The concessions did not prevent layoffs of close to 20 percent of the workforce. The company also had stopped making payment to the pension fund in July of 2011 and is now more than $160 million in arrears.

Ripplewood took the company back into bankruptcy in January of this year, owing close to $1 billion. It has used bankruptcy to impose new contract terms on workers. This is the immediate cause of the current impasse, with the bakery workers’ union refusing to accept the reductions in pay and benefits and changes in work rules demanded by management.

Workers had several important issues to consider beyond just the prospect of working for less pay and under worse conditions. First, and most importantly, there was little reason to have much confidence in the current management team. They had done nothing to turn the company around in the three years since the last bankruptcy and there was little reason to believe that they would do any better going forward.

Accepting new concessions would provide no guarantee of job security. In fact, management wanted the unions to agree to the closure of 10-12 plants (of its choosing) as part of a new contract. This means that many of the company’s 18,000 workers would soon have been laid off even if the workers had accepted management’s terms.

Second, management was not shy about rewarding itself in spite of the company’s poor financial condition. The CEO upped his annual pay to $2.25 million and other top executives got raises of 35-80 percent. This doesn’t seem like the behavior of management that puts the survival of the company first.

Third, the financial situation of the pension has to be a top concern for workers. While the pension is guaranteed by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, the guarantee for multi-employer plans like the one at Hostess is limited. If the plan were to become insolvent then many workers would see large cuts in benefits.

From this standpoint, if Hostess were to continue to put off contributions to the pension and allow it to become badly underfunded, then workers could be looking at sharply reduced pensions in retirement. Workers who are approaching retirement age may view this prospect as a far greater danger than the risk of losing their job at this stage in their career.

Whether or not it was good judgment for the workers and their unions to refuse the concessions demanded by management is not clear. At this point, it’s still possible that the company was bluffing and will keep some of its plants open or that another buyer will come in and keep some of the plants operating.

However it is hard to blame workers for not putting their trust in a management team that shows little competence and is rapidly stuffing its pockets at the company’s expense. It is bad news for workers and the economy as a whole when such people gain control of major corporations!

GO VOTE!!!

Today is your day to be heard, too many people have fought and even died to secure our right to vote, and now a group of 17 billionaires think that their money will buy the government they want.

If you did not plan to vote, I respect that, but if you allow one of these slimy suppression tactics to prevent you from exercising your right, then you are giving in to someone else's agenda, following some oligarch's plan.

Be patient, be calm, be safe and VOTE!

Randall Terry is America's Osama Bin Laden

This guy is preaching the same message as the Taliban!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/31/randall-terry-obama-ad_n_2050133.html?utm_hp_ref=politics


This is the same guy who's organization gave Scott Roeder Dr. Tiller's address, employs as senior policy adviser, Cheryl Sullenger, who  in 1988 was convicted of conspiring to bomb a California abortion clinic.
The website of Operation Rescue released a statement condemning the assassination of Dr. George Tiller 45 minutes before the news was actually reported nationally. Linked to terrorist organization "Army of God" Aryan Nation and "Lambs of Christ".

Some Randall Terry's Talibangelical quotes:

"Let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good.... If a Christian voted for Clinton, he sinned against God. It's that simple.... Our goal is a Christian Nation... we have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want Pluralism. We want theocracy. Theocracy means God rules. [from The News Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Aug 15, 1993]

How about:

"When I, or people like me, are running the country, you'd better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we will execute you. I mean every word of it. I will make it part of my mission to see to it that they are tried and executed... If we're going to have true reformation in America, it is because men once again, if I may use a worn out expression, have righteous testoserone flowing through their veins. They are not afraid of contempt for their contemporaries. They are not even here to get along. They are here to take over... Somebody like Susan Smith should be dead. She should be dead now.
[at the Aug 8, 1995 U.S. Taxpayers Alliance Banquet in Washington DC, talking about doctors who perform abortions and volunteer escorts]

This anal fistula is just the same as the Taliban, Bin Laden, or any other radical zealot trying to foist Sharia law, or the Levi Jewish equivalent, onto secular Americans.... Promoter of fear, hatred and violence, this used car salesman (Really) is just another freedom hating, religious fascist.

Fuck him, and everyone that thinks like him.

Republicans just stop the double standards.

However the idea that more security would have led to a different outcome, shows a lack of force on force knowledge, and the operation of a diplomatic mission. Even with a group of Marines, the outcome would have been the same, only with a Libyan body count.

Diplomats cannot do their jobs from a bunker or with an occupational force, and according to the State Department embassy personnel are ALWAYS asking for more resources, no matter what the threat level, often without the Ambassador's direction.

Too many conservatives, in their zeal to cast this president as something he is not, are ignoring the reality that embassies are on the front lines,  in fact there were twelve terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities abroad during the Bush administration — the most of any president in history:

  2002 - Nine people killed by bomb blast near US embassy in Lima - seen as attempt to disrupt forthcoming visit by President Bush.
   2002-2006 - Karachi consulate attacks: three separate attacks killed 18 people including an American diplomat
    2002 - Two Marines shot, one killed in Kuwait.
    2003 - Riyadh Compound Bombings kill 9 Americans, among 35 others.
    2003 - Three American diplomats are killed by a roadside bomb targeting their convoy in Gaza.
    2003–present - Damascus terrorist attacks: American interests in Syria targeted radicals.
    2004 - Civilians Nick Berg, Jack Hensley, and Eugene Armstrong kidnapped and beheaded in Iraq.
    2004 - Paul Marshall Johnson, Jr, civilian working in Saudi Arabia, kidnapped and beheaded; five other Americans die in attacks in Saudi Arabia in 2004.
    2007 - American embassy attacked in Athens, Greece.
    2008 - John Granville, US diplomat, assassinated in Khartoum, Sudan

Does that add perspective to your constant bullshit?

So back off the ludicrous white washing of history. The fact free bubble you guys live in actually causes you to harm this nation. You are damaging our country, disenfranchising fellow citizens, and just pissing reasonable people off by denying facts, ignoring science and believing that Leave it to Beaver and the Flintstones were historical documentaries.

So stop it.

GOP Election tactics

This election season, the GOP is taking four key strategies to their recent success to the extreme. Extremes radical enough to impinge on Americans' conscious minds.

It is obvious that these strategies have been incredibly successful. But, I would suggest that the main condition for their success has been that they confirm the biases and prejudices of their audience and so are repeated daily by the right wing echo chamber aimed solely at the low effort thinking of the average low-information voter.

These tactics are:

1. Money shoveled into advertising.
The ridiculous and patently partisan Supreme Court ruling opened the doors to unlimited amounts of plutocratic cash, and it is pouring into ridiculous levels of advertising. But intrusive advertising has a powerful tendency to lose its effectiveness, as commercial advertisers know all too well. Will the American people begin to react negatively to one party outspending the other by massive margins?

2. The constant scapegoating of minorities and the dismissal of women as equal citizens.
When the political attacks on minorities and women, who form a small majority of the country, become aggressively overt, will they lead to political blowback?

3. Voter suppression and caging.
It's been going on since 1789, of course, and when you suppress the rights of a single minority group, other folks can shrug it off. But now, they are suppressing the votes of multiple minority groups, the poor and the elderly. Which means us, our neighbors, friends and our grandparents. These suppression tactics will be experienced by millions of Americans, some who have been voting in what they perceive as their interests for decades. Is this blatant attack on democracy going too far even for complacent America?

4. Lying as a campaign tactic.
Lee Atwater taught the lessons of Josef Goebbels to the GOP--lie large and often, and if repeated, people will believe the lies. The GOP has been lying above and beyond the spin-line since the 1980s. But normally, they lie with message discipline, so it can be repeated by by right wing media, and pundits verbatim. However Romney and Ryan are lying impulsively,  without consistency, often contradicting their previous positions and statements. And the lies increasingly contradict the actual lived experience of most Americans. Will the GOP finally develop a serious credibility problem?

Obviously, it is my hope that these tactics finally begin to backfire this year and lying to America will begin to engender consequences. If that happened, I think we would see a break in the rigid fervor of right wing ideology that has gripped the nation since they canonized Reagan.. Credibility once lost is almost impossible to regain, and we in the reality-based world have for decades been yearning for a return to some form of intellectual consistency in the nation. The GOP is basically betting the house on taking their trusted tactics to the horizon. It would be ideologically satisfying to see them lose that bet.

But will it happen? There are some encouraging signs I think. But these Goebbels-inspired tactics are still awfully strong.
What do you think?

Romney Cites Study Based On Repealing Almost All Middle Class Tax Breaks To Bolster His Tax Plan

An article by Pat Garofalo published on Oct 19, 2012

Mitt Romney has been desperately trying to refute a study by the Tax Policy Center showing that he can’t mathematically achieve his goals of reducing income tax rates while shielding the middle class from a tax increase and not adding to the deficit. If Romney is committed to his rate reduction and deficit neutrality, he would have to raise middle class taxes by $2,000, even under the most generous assumptions.
Romney has been pointing to “six studies” that he claims show that his tax plan work. However, those “studies” (which are mostly blog posts and op-eds) show no such thing.
So now the Romney campaign is touting a 2006 study from the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation that he claims vindicates his approach, telling Roll Call the study shows “how a ‘Romney-style tax plan’ could bolster growth.” According to the study, tax reform that eliminates deductions and loopholes and reduces income tax rates will slightly increase economic growth over a decade. But the study assumes that nearly all middle class tax breaks — including those for children, mortgages, and employer contributions for health care — are repealed in their entirety:

Under the proposal, all personal exemptions, itemized deductions, personal credits except for the earned income credit, and all above-the-line adjustments to income except for retirement savings deductions and the deduction for self employment taxes would be repealed. The largest categories of deductions repealed are present-law deductions for home mortgage interest expenses, State and local taxes, and charitable contributions. In addition, the exclusions for certain employee fringe benefits, such as employer contributions for health and life insurance, would be repealed. The standard deduction would remain.

The study also found that such a plan would result in the “redistribution” of income tax liability from high-income earners to the middle class. And the promised job growth is only between 1 and 2 percent over ten years (one to two million jobs), while Romney promises that his tax plan will create seven million jobs over four years.
Romney’s claims about job creation under his tax plan are almost entirely fabricated. An economic adviser for both the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations said this week that Romney’s tax plan won’t create jobs.

Republicans bring the stupid to the Science Committee

I began to have some serious doubts about the overall IQ of the House Science Committee when a particularly stupid, yet outspoken freshman teabagger, Sandy Adams (R-FL), who luckily has since been defeated in a primary, started raving about how the National Weather Service should be disbanded because cable TV does such a great job, obviously never bothering to consider where cable TV gets their information. He did so in an official Science Committee hearing.

Another member of the committee stated that most of the other Republicans saw Adams as an embarrassment and as a focus for scorn and derision... and amusement.

Unfortunately not all of them feel this way.
 
Long passed are the days when mainstream Republicans like Sherwood Boehlert would dominate and chair the Science Committee and spend his career working on environmental policy and energy efficiency.

That kind of agenda has become anathema to today's Republican Party which considers Science as a liberal conspiracy against their single-minded belief in Greed, Biblical Literalism, and power mongering.

 Today the Science Committee is chaired by the oldest and one of the most senile Members of Congress, Ralph Hall, a former Texas "Democrat" who switched to the GOP after voting to impeach Bill Clinton, getting rich off the Abramoff gravy train and endorsing George W. Bush. So what qualifies Hall to be chairman of the Science Committee? 

He's one of Congress' leading Climate Change deniers and has actually accused climate scientists of inventing the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, just in order to receive federal research grants.

What more evidence could the Republican leadership possibly desire in order to give Hall the chairmanship?

In fact, when you look at the current committee, you sense that the Republican leadership chose their members specifically for their ignorance and devout denial of Science.
Aside from weather expert Adams, the committee is chock full of flat-earth idiots, teabaggers like Paul Broun (R-GA), Todd Akin (R-MO), the GOP expert in lady parts, and internet porn expert Ben Quayle (R-AZ). Other notably anti-Science members of the Science Committee include Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), Randy Neugebauer (R-TX), Steven Palazzo (R-MI), Lamar Smith (R-TX), Frank Lucas (R-OK), Chip Cravaack (R-MN) and Larry Bucshon (R-IN).


This month, with the election coming up, Scientific American decided to ask a simple question-- and answer it scientifically: Does Congress Get A Passing Grade On Science? They contacted 32 congressional leaders involved in science on their committees but only 9-- 7 Democrats and 2 Republicans-- agreed to respond. 

It is an enlightening read.

The Republican denial of climate change science is a textbook example of irresponsibility and borders on depraved indifference.
 According to the scientific journal Nature, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have taken positions on climate change that are "fundamentally anti-science" and the result of "willful ignorance," making it "hard to escape the conclusion that the U.S. Congress has entered the intellectual wilderness." 

Notwithstanding the scientific consensus that climate change is occurring and is a serious threat, House Republicans unanimously supported a bill, H.R. 910, to overturn EPA's scientific finding that climate change endangers public health and welfare. 
During the floor debate on H.R. 910, Henry Waxman offered an amendment that stated: "Congress accepts the scientific findings of the Environmental Protection Agency that climate change is occurring, is caused or acceleratedlargely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare." 

240 out of 241 House Republican voted to reject these scientific findings.

Many House Republicans explained their rejection of EPA's scientific findings by stating their view that the science is "not settled." , despite 98% consensus of Climatologists.
At the same time, these same House Republicans have voted to cut funding for climate research that could provide more insight into the pace and likely impacts of climate change. They have also refused to hold hearings to better understand the overwhelming body of existing scientific evidence showing that climate change is occurring.

If Policymakers cannot accept scientific fact as evidence for something as serious and potentially disastrous as climate change, how in the fuck can we trust them with women's rights, healthcare or ANY science related issues?
Congress should be holding hearings with the nation's top scientists to understand the problems we face so they can design sensible policies to mitigate these issues. Ignorance is NOT valuable to anyone to anyone except those who will profit from it in the short term.

Sigh...My Bullshit meter is pegged sir!

(1) Willard Inc. and his handlers demonstrated that it is possible for a man to get up in front of a national TV audience and not just lie his head off but at almost every point flatly contradict things he has said just as publicly and: (a) be lying both times, and (b) have nobody in the infotainment noozemedia notice.

(2) That the president's handlers were totally unprepared for debating against blatant lies and complete reversals and denials employed by Mr. Romney. Which is kind of sad considering Romney's track record of complete fabrication and outright lies.

(3) Do we know whether moderator Jim Lehrer was acting out of compulsions invisible to the naked eye which made most of the questions suitable for a well-armed liar like Willard while also omitting from the discussion almost every subject of actual important regarding domestic affairs? I think again of that mock Republican presidential debate staged by ACN anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) on The Newsroom where Will as moderator asked real issues questions and in follow-up pressed each candidate stand-in for an actual answer.

I've always believed that G Ws second term fell apart not because the American public realized that it had been systematically lied to at every point during the Bush regime, but because Americans became angry at the woeful quality of the lies they were being fed. It was, like, personally insulting to them; we were being asked to swallow lies that wouldn't get past a learning impaired four-year-old!

And so, in accord with the gospel delivered unto them by St. Ronnie the Reagan, which tells neo cons that as Americans they're entitled to a reality that makes them feel good and never ever have to settle for any so-called reality that doesn't, they completely expunged the Bush regime from memory -- without, however, ever turning against either its policies or its procedures.

Similarly, the bumbling failures of the Willard presidential circus to date, has repelled many of those same Americans who are demanding nothing more than their a minimum standard in the bullshit they're asked to swallow.
The real danger lies in the fear that if Willard's people have truly gotten their fabrication act together, their guy is already immunized against charges of "flip-flopping," and accusations of "inconsistencies" or "contradictions" or even calling out the lies, will be unlikely to have any real impact, since that portion of the public's only question is most likely to be, "Does this candidate make me feel better about preferred my reality ?"

Speaking of reversals, denials and lies:

Here is Mitt stating that he will drop the tax rate to 20%,  AND then denying that he ever mentioned tax cuts.

http://youtu.be/ZykA7oQm8Eg


Some facts about the Romney Tax plans:

http://taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/romney-plan.cfm

http://www.businessinsider.com/romney-debate-economic-plan-2012-10#1-maintain-the-bush-tax-cuts-on-personal-income-1

There is reality, and there is conservative consensus reality where lies do not matter the next day.

Romney....Oligarch....Plutocrat...Robber Baron.

Romney is the last kind of person we should let anywhere near public office. He doesn't see non-Mormons as fellow human beings and he lacks the nuance to understand the difference between investing and pillaging. His career was always that of a pillager and he never purposely added a bit of value to anything he touched. He moved money around and was rewarded beyond reason.

You already know how the scions of the John Birch Society, David and Charles Koch and Organized Crime boss (and Communist China agent) Sheldon Adelson have dumped tens of millions of dollars into electing Romney and other Republicans. Now we find out another crooked financial predator, Ameritrade's Joe Ricketts, has pledged $12 million towards replacing democracy with an oligarchy. Romney met with a bunch of these self-entitled billionaires a few months ago and gave them his underlying philosophy about America-- namely that:

"there are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax... my job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Its so fucking ass backwards, because it's Romney himself-- and so many of his friends-- who spend millions to hire armies of tax lawyers so they can cheat on their taxes.

Even Republican Congressman Ron Paul said he won't endorse Romney until he releases his tax returns like every other presidential candidate. But if there is a class of people in America who are moochers and parasites and who believe they are entitled to own everything, it's Mitt Romney and his virulently anti-democracy cohorts.

The people who acyually receive the lion's share of government spending are not the poor, that is a lie perpetuated by those who carry water for the wealthiest Americans.
No.
They are Republicans.
They are senior citizens.
They are white men with high school degrees.

As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.

Romney’s comments also reveal that he has lost any sense of the social compact. In 1987, during Ronald Reagan’s second term, 62 percent of Republicans believed that the government has a responsibility to help those who can’t help themselves. Now, according to the Pew Research Center, only 40 percent of Republicans believe that.  30 years of right wing vilification has seen to that.

The Republican Party has shifted over toward a much more hyper-individualistic social view-- from the  language of common citizenship to the Randian absolutes of makers and takers.

The worst of this video, is that it shows  Mr. Romney knows nothing about ambition and motivation. The formula he sketches is this: People who are forced to make it on their own have drive. People who receive benefits have dependency.

Utter bullshit of course, no affluent or middle class parent acts as if this is a fact. These parents don’t deprive their children of money, food, or medical care so they can learn to struggle on their own. They shower benefits on their children to give them more opportunities-- so they can play sports, go on trips learn about other cultures and develop more skills and understanding.

People are motivated only when they feel competent. When they have a sense of agency and security.
They are motivated when they have more opportunities. Ambition is fired by possibility, not by deprivation, as a trip to ANY impoverished nation will show.

But we have seen the right ignore empirical facts for more than a generation now.
Nate Shinigawa (NY-23) created this info-graphic to help explain to voters in his district just how wrong Romney was in his nasty remarks:

An open letter to conservatives.

Ignoring the facts that Republicans declared the week after the election that they would not work with Obama at all, and would do everything in their power to crash his presidency, even if it harms the nation, is the ultimate in blind allegiance.

Republicans put their party ahead of the nation, and way ahead of the people that elected them to represent them. This is an empirical fact.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-A09a_gHJc

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/biden-mcconnell-decided-to-withhold-all-cooperation-even-before-we-took-office/2012/08/10/64e9a138-e302-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_blog.html

http://www.thedaonline.com/opinion/column-republicans-have-refused-to-work-with-obama-from-the-beginning-1.2591098#.UETmC6PUTSg

This has never been done before. One party refusing to uphold their obligation to govern, refusing to facilitate legislation to help the economy, filibustering 100% of legislation proposed by Democrats, holding or filibustering political and judicial appointments, openly lying to the American public, inventing "Facts" that border on the absurd, keeping millions of Americans unemployed in the hope that one man will lose his job....

THAT is the travesty, THAT is the transgression, These are the machinations that are damaging the country, THIS is tyranny.

If you do not wish to believe it is happening, just put your head back into the right wing echo chamber, because you are part of the problem, not the solution!

The Separation of Wealth and State

The U.S. Constitution guarantees separation of church and state. What this nation needs now is separation of wealth and state.

Without such a protection, Americans stand to lose their democracy. They'll be ruled instead by an aristocracy of the wealthy.

That's the plan of the 1%, and has been for years. To them, it was no more than a perk when the U.S. Supreme Court enabled politicians to open their wallets for unlimited, anonymous campaign contributions.

That's because way before the 2010 Citizens United ruling, 1% was orchestrating their takeover.
If  her rest of us don't stop them soon, don't establish some sort of separation of wealth and state, then the nation will lose its founding concepts-- that all men are created equal and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Aristocracies get to ignore the serfs.

Already the oligarchs have seen tremendous success. The rich really do enjoy unprecedented advantages in education, health, safety security and finances.Hel, there are tax credits, havens and dodges only available only to top tax brackets.
They've succeeded in stuffing Congress with their peers. In all of America, less than 1 percent of all people are millionaires. In Congress,  that number is 47%. The median net worth of a U.S. senator in 2010 was $2.56 million. There is an old saying that the fastest way to become rich in America was to become a Congressperson.

Those guys haven't experienced what it's like to try to pay a mortgage, fix the car and keep food on the table for the average household with a median income of less than $52,000. They're completely out of touch with the 50 million Americans who don't have health insurance.

In addition, the oligarchs implemented a system to influence even those lawmakers who are not millionaires, it's called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Corporations and the rich, like the billionaire Koch brothers, give ALEC  a LOT of money, which it uses to write "model" legislation, like voter suppression laws. ALEC's lawmaker members, mostly conservative Republicans, pay dues of $50 a year. ALEC entices them to attend swanky conferences with freebies, like ALEC-paid hotel rooms, ALEC-paid plane rides and God knows what else ALEC-paid. Of course, those aren't bribes. But the free vacations may incline lawmaker members to introduce ALEC-written legislation.

ALEC is sly. It doesn't come right out and say its "model" voter identification laws are intended to suppress balloting by Democrats. ALEC contends they're designed to prevent voter fraud. Within the past two years, 10 states passed these laws.

A handful of uber oligarchs, including billionaires Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, and hedge funders Kenneth Griffin, Cliff Asness and Paul Singer, will spend $500 million to install their chosen candidates in the White House.
Adelson by himself is expected to give $100 million to elect Romney and Paul Ryan, one tenth of everything the Republicans are expected to spend. That kind of money will buy Adelson a little more than a couple of overnights in the Lincoln Bedroom.

...They're willing to buy influence, write legislation, demand fealty and enjoy the perks of this nation; but not pay taxes to support it. The Ryan budget would reduce millionaire Romney's tax rate from about 14 percent to less than 1 percent. And, for the rest of us, Ryan would destroy Medicare, Social Security and end the Social Safety Net as we know it.

The last thing in the world most of the Founding Fathers wanted-- and certainly most of the non-Southern Founders-- was the establishment on our shores of an hereditary aristocracy. But with our long-cherished meritocracy failing dismally-- you should treat yourself to Chris Hayes' book, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy-- the oligarchs have carved an opening for themselves, and they have purchased a political party more than willing to carry out their plans... or, more accurately, a party and a half.

Paul Ryan, bloviator.

Paul certainly gave a barn burner of a speech...To bad it was thick with distortions, and bald faced lies.

How can there be a serious debate about issues, when an entire party has decided that facts do not matter as long as the fiction gets spread.

Here is a list of lies culled from memory. This will be added to as transcripts become available.


    The GM plant in Janesville. Ryan mentioned it in a pretty effective section on the Obama-induced pangs of his hometown. But as Matthew DeLuca explained two weeks ago, GM announced the closure on 6/03/2008, and it ceased production in December 2008. Unless I am seriously mistaken, that was during the Bush presidency. Ryan hustled to save it. He voted for the Bush 2008 GM bailout, in another attempt to save it. You can call that proof of government's failure, sure, but Obama didn't force it on the city.

    "The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst." That's extraordinarily hard to argue, since every economist worth a damn states the stimulus helped save or create 1-3 million jobs. Then there is the fact that Ryan's office begged for some stimulus grants stating that it would help create 2600 jobs in his district.

    "$716 billion, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama." A load of fetid dingo's kidneys, and a complete fabrication.
 The Medicare spending "cuts" are of the sort that Ryan defended when he was rising through the House—reductions in future reimbursement rates. And these savings are to be put back into the program further strengthening it.The budget House Republicans passed this year, which Paul Ryan wrote, keeps  Obama’s Medicare cuts and adds another $205 billion in additional cuts on top. Neither of which is to be put back into the Medicare program.

    "A downgraded America."  Another bloviation that ignores the reality we all witnessed. S&P's rationale for downgrading the United States from AAA to AA+ "assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place." This was "because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues." Ryan's promised to keep those tax cuts for now, then try and flatten the code into two low rates, and we don't know what the S&P Tiki Gods think of that.

    The "bipartisan debt commission" Ryan referred to was Simpson-Bowles. He served on it, and voted against the report, because it didn't tackle Medicare costs—which sort of brings us back to the "$716 billion funneling" issue.


"President Obama just walked away from the debt commission" Another whopper, figuring it was House Republicans that walked away from the negotiations in a publicity stunt.


Ryan attacked Obama’s Patient Protection Affordable Care Act for being laden with “mandates, taxes, fees and fines that have no place in a free country.” He was talking about mandates such as the one Mitt Romney imposed in Massachusetts, and Ryan supported through his first decade in Congress, up until President Obama accepted it for the ACA.

When Romney picked Paul Ryan he said that he had a "unique ability to get people to come together." This is not supported by Paul Ryan's resume, which contains no bipartisan achievements of note. It certainly wasn't found in the speech Ryan delivered to Republicans on Wednesday night. He talked about Obama's "government-planned life," which sounded like the cartoon speech of talk radio. Both Romney and Ryan have repeatedly stated numerous times that "Government does not create jobs", even though Ryan's entire adult life has been in governmental jobs....

Trust Mitt, Ann Romney said last night. But if the idea man on the ticket only uses his skills for easily disproved assertions, character attacks and disingenuous sales pitches, why should voters trust that he won't do the same thing once Romney is in office?

The party of rape.

Rape of the land. Rape of your 401K. Rape of Iraq. The desire to rape Iran. Rape of you. Rape of the poor, the middle class. Government sanctioned trans-vaginal violations. It’s no big deal, if you’re a Republican or some other malevolent Talibangelical zealot.

Rape is as Republican as a bottle of 1987 Henri Jayer Richebourg Grand Cru Pinot Noir, Which if you have never heard of, you must not know a Koch Bros....(If you had to ask, you can't afford the $14,650 a bottle)

Remember Jamie Leigh Jones’s charge of drugging and gang rape by KBR co-workers and ensuing abuse at a Halliburton/KBR Green Zone location in Iraq?

When newly minted Sen. Al Franken proposed an amendment to our country’s dealing with outside contractors that would give a rape victim the right to file charges if raped by a fellow employee of such a contractor while in the service of that contractor, 30 US Senators voted NO.

Go ahead, process that for a moment.

Yes, the Senate has a pro-rape caucus.

Who had the audacity to take this right away from women employed by contractors to redress rape? Hint: The cretin who signed the original piece of paper removing this right to redress has the initials GWB.

For a century conservatives have followed a certain mindset; from fighting against voting rights for anyone who isn’t white and male to taking a stand against equal pay for equal work or even whether you should get work and in what field to telling you what you can do with your own body, mind, and soul.

Jeff "Angry Leprechaun" Sessions, who was such a gentleman when questioning Justice Sotomayor, called Franken's legislation "a political attack on Halliburton." That's what mattered to him. I know that if I had a daughter who worked for Sessions, or any of these throwbacks, she'd be carrying a handgun and starting to look for a new job.

The rest of the Pro Rape Caucus are:

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-ID)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

Will the Senate’s pro-rape caucus grow-- think Akin (MO), Connie Mack (FL), Tommy Thompson (WI), Denny Rehberg (MT), Jeff Flake (AZ), Ted Cruz (TX), Josh Mandel (OH), Rick Berg (ND)? Probably.

War is the legalized rape of lands, of resources, of the people themselves. Is it any wonder the Republicans always feel the need to start wars, whether necessary or not. Bush legalized the rape of Iraq, now they desire Iran.

Republicans approach life with an Attila-the-Hun attitude.
Bank rape. Corporate rape. Rape of women. Twisting the law to rape… Now, they give us concepts of “forcible rape” and “legitimate rape." One thing’s for sure. It is the victim who must be punished, or, at least has no rights. I feel that we are only minutes away from some Republican somewhere spouting the words “permissible rape."

Newt U...At it again?

Remember when Newt Gingritch changed American political discourse with his primer for denigrating and demeaning all things Democratic:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4443.htm

Well, our favorite history revisionist is up to his old tricks with a series of seminars amusingly enough called Newt U!

People, I swear to God I haven't made a word of this up.

    Monday - August 27th - "We Can Do Better" - Jobs, Growth and Protecting Medicare

    Speakers: Speaker Newt Gingrich, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Utah Governor Gary Herbert, Congressman Aaron Schock (IL-18), Former New York Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey, Larry Kudlow, Host, CNBC's "The Kudlow Report," John Goodman, President & CEO, National Center for Policy Analysis, James Kemp, Jack Kemp Foundation, Christine Donahue, Michigan Delegate and Small Business Owner, Lahnee Chen, Policy Director, Romney for President

    Tuesday - August 28th - "We Built it" - Small Businesses and Civil Society Build America

    Speakers: Speaker Newt Gingrich, Callista Gingrich, President, Gingrich Productions, Former Secretary Jim Nicholson, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Greggory DeVore, Physicians for Romney, CA, Fred Lampropolous, Utah Delegate and CEO, Merit Medical

    Wednesday - August 29th – "We Can Change It" - The New American Energy Opportunity

    Speakers: Speaker Newt Gingrich, Kellyanne Conway, CEO & President, the polling company, Scott Noble, President, Noble Royalties, Inc., Rebecca Rosen, Energy Advisor, Romney for President, Harold Hamm, CEO, Continental Resources

    Thursday - August 30th - "We Believe In America" - We Don't Believe in Obamacare

    Speakers: Speaker Newt Gingrich, U.S. Senator Mike Lee, Utah, Congressman Tom Price (GA 6), Donna Williams, North Carolina Delegate, Dr. Greggory DeVore, Physicians for Romney, CA, Kellyanne Conway, CEO & President, the polling company

What will you wager that NONE of this bullshit will be seen by their national TV audience?

Police state?

It seems that everyday there is a new video of police officers aggressing BEYOND the needs of the confrontation!
It now appears that any attempt to question law enforcement is seen as belligerence, and that seems to equal a beat down!


For example, Steven Anderson, a Phoenix-area church leader, tased and beaten for non compliance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJF5cUWXA_A&feature=channel_page


In Texas, an officer tased a pastor and pepper sprayed the congregation when pastor Jose Elias Moran went to assist the stopped driver, a church member, by asking the police what had happened.


In 2010, a Sheriff's deputy savagely beat a 15 year old girl for being "Mouthy" and assaulting him with a sneaker! Horrors!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipb_PeXOdT4

He has refused a plea deal that would have netted him less than 1 year in jail, if he resigned from the Sheriff's Department. He now faces a Federal Felony civil rights abuse charge that carries a 3-5 year sentence. Some justice prevails.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/407640_deputy29.html


On Friday, June 26, 2009, Francine Busby, Democratic contender for Randy Cunningham's vacated seat, was present at a fundraising event in a private home in Encinitas, California, when a deputy sheriff, Marshall Abbott, arrived to investigate a noise complaint at 9pm, 1 hour before noise ordinance laws go into effect.
Approximately 25 people were in attendance when the sheriff arrived. The homeowner, 60-year old Shari Barman, asked the sheriff why her date of birth was needed. In response, the sheriff "began pulling on her arm" according to numerous witnesses, despite Barman's partner pleading that the woman had recently undergone shoulder surgery. The sheriff then threw Barman to the ground. Afterwards, the deputy discharged pepper spray in the home and on the crowd, with Busby present. Paramedics were then required to treat the people present at the fundraiser, according to Busby.

Busby described the incident thus:
“ The deputies were telling people that they were taking statements from, that the call came in about noise from a Democratic rally, or Democratic demonstration. He was not listening; there was no controlling this person. The people who asked him to stop hurting this woman were pepper-sprayed without warning, there was no talking to this man.”


Barman alleged the entire incident may be politically motivated, as Busby was heckled during a speech by a neighbor, and that the heckling was the only "noise" that evening in the neighborhood, contrary to the original complaint that prompted the arrival of the sheriff Abbott. Busby described it as, "I heard my name, and obviously derogatory words. Other people heard profanity, and somebody heard something about gays, as well."The received noise complaint from the neighbor to police was to "complain of loudness from Democrats".


The San Diego District Attorney opened an investigation into the actions of the deputy, Marshall Abbott, in July 2009. Abbott, age 29, is a former United States Marine and a sheriff since 2006.


BART transit police shot an unarmed man, in handcuffs. The Department immediately issued statement regarding the "Discharge" of his weapon. He did appear to be suprised.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZTbJH6BNaU


And then there is this gem, from the Critical Mass bike event in NYC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUkiyBVytRQ

And who can forget the latest rash of over the top militaristic assaults perpetrated against the Occupy movement:
http://youtu.be/C3ygvJga7Jw
http://youtu.be/5WEK6HgXBsQ
http://youtu.be/Gy6LQlpemiw
http://youtu.be/LWZtJCYv6QE

Who protects us from the police? Who protects us when probable cause is whatever the officer decides it is? Even if you are innocent of any crime, you can be put into the system, and be forced to pay thousands of dollars in fees, fines and court costs!


Who protects us from the police mentality that it is "Them" against "Us"? The Police State does not mean what you think it means.

Ryan just keeps dishing up the hits,

Paul Ryan:

    -Has only held government jobs while telling others government does not create jobs or that government jobs are bad for the economy...CHECK

    -Made his millions as a government employee while telling others that there are too many people dependent on government...... CHECK

    -Received government assistance   (in the form of SS)  when his father died, but NOW wants to privatize or gut social safety nets because these programs are  "hammocks"............ CHECK

    -Enjoys completely government funded retirement and healthcare packages while telling public sector employees that such programs are to expensive and take away their "freedoms"............ CHECK

    -Never held an executive position but is magically qualified  because  "He has  foreign policy experience from speaking  to Generals"............. CHECK

    -Voted for Bush's deficit exploding government  programs but now says The Prez is fiscally irresponsible ............. CHECK

    -Voted to keep Billions of Dollars" off Budget"and out of the tax payers sight BUT claims to be an honest politician...CHECK

    -Voted to bail out Wall Street, but says bailing out main street is socialism ...........DOUBLE CHECK

What is there not to like about Ryan?

The perfect GOP candidate, full of hubris, arrogance, hypocricy and bullshit.

This weekend the Richmonder reported on how Ryan managed to use inside information to avoid the consequences of the 2008 financial crash his policies caused.

I guess that's only illegal if one is not a Congressman:

    It should probably come as no surprise to anyone that someone like Paul Ryan would trade on inside information gained through his position as a congressman to line his pockets, but this particular instance is especially egregious. Ryan attended a closed meeting with congressional leaders, Bush's Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on September 18, 2008. The purpose of the meeting was to disclose the coming economic meltdown and beg Congress to pass legislation to help collapsing banks.

     Instead of doing anything to help Americans, Ryan left the meeting and that very same day Paul Ryan sold shares of stock he owned in several troubled banks and reinvested the proceeds in Goldman Sachs, a bank that the meeting had disclosed was not in trouble.

This is the guy Republicans want one heartbeat away from the presidency?

Gordon Gecko/John Galt 2012!!!

More reasons to not vote Republican this fall.

Romney, who has made a habit of alienating American women due to his patronizing and dismissive approach to women's health issues, his support for the Blunt amendment, a bill that was introduced to restrict access to birth control by allowing any employer the right to deny health insurance coverage for any benefit based on a “moral” conviction, his declaration of: “Planned Parenthood, we’re going to get rid of that.”, declaring that he would nominate mysoginistic, homophobic and regressive justices like Scalia.

Well, it gets no better with his VP pick.

Rep. Paul Ryan cosponsored a bill that would give fetuses full personhood rights from the moment of fertilization, voted to defund federal family planning programs, authored a budget that dismantles Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, all of which disproportionately aid and employ women, and voted multiple times to prevent women in the military from using their own money to pay for abortions at military hospitals.

Ryan also supported a ridiculous bill that Democrats nicknamed the "Let Women Die Act," which would have allowed hospitals to refuse to provide a woman emergency abortion care, even if her life is on the line, based on "Moral" grounds.

Only Stepford wives and Republican women believe these are good policies, reasonable people know better.

For Fuck's Sake!!! The Oligarch Party has their ticket!

Ryan, born into privilege, has only a BA in economics, and as an adult, has ONLY worked on the taxpayer dime, first as an aid, a speech writer, and then a legislative manager for elected Republicans, before being elected to Congress in 1999. The ultimate hypocrisy, is his statements that: "Government does not create jobs", from a guy that has never worked for anything else.

As for his "Fiscal conservative" bullshit:

He voted for ALL the policies that created the current financial woes: the Bush tax cuts for the rich; the war in Iraq; the Bush Medicare prescription-drug plan, which is the first entitlement without a dedicated revenue source.

As for his "Budget", decried by Catholic Bishops, Nuns, and everyone else not preaching "Prosperity Gospels" as i"Immoral" and "Detrimental to the most vulnerable Americans":

Medicare would be eliminated and replaced with a voucher system in  which seniors would be given a Coupon for $5K and told to negotiate with the health insurance companies. According to the CBO, ten years after the Ryan plan was enacted, seniors would be paying $6,400 per year more for the same health care, as the coupons would not increase to levels that match even with current projected HC cost increases.

His budget cuts 25% of already underfunded transportation spending, also underfunded Veterans' benefits would be cut 13%, education, food safety, air traffic control, environmental protection, almost everything that makes Americans safer, smarter or stronger would see drastic cuts.

The Tax Policy Center crunched the numbers and found that under Romney's proposal, 95 percent of Americans would see their taxes go up by an average of $500, but millionaires would receive an extra $87,000 tax cut.
The net result: an $86 billion annual shift in the tax burden away from those making over $200,000 a year and onto those making less.


There is also the complete lack of integrity in speaking about his principles:

Ryan has described Rand as "the reason I got involved in public service," and reportedly makes staffers read her works.
Then, a few months ago, facing Catholic protestors at Georgetown University, Ryan said he had renounced Rand long ago, and based his budget on "Catholic Values".

A claim that was debunked by Catholic Bishops and nuns...You know, folks that STUDY Catholic values....

It seems to me that Ryan has renounced Rand's politically poisonous atheism, but not her morally bankrupt philosophy of believing that the customer, the tenants, the workers that build the buildings, the roads, the ports etc., the electricians, the glaziers, the teachers and everyone else that made it possible for the success of many millionaires, are considered parasites, just sponging off the intrinsic genius of the wealthy, who inherited their wealth, or the entrepreneur that came up with an idea.

Yet none of these Randian fuckwits, ever build, manufacture, or bring to fruition ANY of their ideas, yet dismiss all those that do as "Parasites".

It is a pathologically narcissistic viewpoint.

His entire bullshit scheme destroys the underpinnings of America, in order to favor a few million Americans at the expense of the other 300 million.

Right wing domestic terrorism. Very long list.

Remember when the DHS published a report of possible right wing lone wolf shooters and anti-government terrorists?

Overnight, Hitler, Stalin and Mao became Liberals in the fact free right wing echo chamber, and elected Republican Congressmen dismissed the report as liberal paranoia and propaganda.

From - Terror From the Right on Southern Poverty Law Center's website:

"Here are the stories of plots, conspiracies and racist rampages since 1995 — plots and violence waged against a democratic America.

July 28, 1995
Antigovernment extremist Charles Ray Polk is arrested after trying to purchase a machine gun from an undercover police officer, and is later indicted by federal grand jury for plotting to blow up the Internal Revenue Service building in Austin, Texas. At the time of his arrest, Polk is trying to purchase plastic explosives to add to the already huge arsenal he's amassed. Polk is sentenced to almost 21 years in federal prison.

October 9, 1995
Saboteurs derail an Amtrak passenger train near Hyder, Ariz., killing one person and injuring about 70 others. Several antigovernment messages, signed by the "Sons of Gestapo," are left behind. The perpetrators remain at large.

November 9, 1995
Oklahoma Constitutional Militia leader Willie Ray Lampley, his wife Cecilia and another man, John Dare Baird, are arrested as they prepare explosives to bomb numerous targets, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, gay bars and abortion clinics. The three, along with another suspect arrested later, are sentenced to terms of up to 11 years in 1996. Cecilia Lampley is released in 2000, while Baird and Willie Lampley — who wrote letters from prison urging others to violence — are freed in 2004 and 2006, respectively.

December 18, 1995
An Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employee discovers a plastic drum packed with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil in a parking lot behind the IRS building in Reno, Nev. The device failed to explode a day earlier when a three-foot fuse went out prematurely. Ten days later, tax protester Joseph Martin Bailie is arrested. Bailie is eventually sentenced to 36 years in federal prison, with a release date of 2027. An accomplice, Ellis Edward Hurst, is released in 2004.

January 18, 1996
Peter Kevin Langan, the pseudonymous "Commander Pedro" who leads the underground Aryan Republican Army, is arrested after a shootout with the FBI in Ohio. Along with six other suspects arrested around the same time, Langan is charged in connection with a string of 22 bank robberies in seven Midwestern states between 1994 and 1996. After pleading guilty and agreeing to testify, co-conspirator Richard Guthrie commits suicide in his cell. Two others, Kevin McCarthy and Scott Stedeford, enter plea bargains and do testify against their co-conspirators. Eventually, Mark Thomas, a leading neo-Nazi in Pennsylvania, pleads guilty for his role in helping organize the robberies and agrees to testify against Langan and other gang members. Shawn Kenny, another suspect, becomes a federal informant. Langan is sentenced to a life term in one case, plus 55 years in another. McCarthy is released from prison in 2007, while Stedeford's release date is set in 2022. Thomas receives eight years and is released in early 2004.

April 11, 1996
Antigovernment activist and self-described "survivalist" Ray Hamblin is charged with illegal possession of explosives after authorities find 460 pounds of the high explosive Tovex, 746 pounds of ANFO blasting agent and 15 homemade hand grenades on his property in Hood River, Ore. Hamblin is sentenced to almost four years in federal prison, and is released in March 2000.

April 12, 1996
Apparently inspired by his reading of a neo-Nazi tract, Larry Wayne Shoemake kills one black man and wounds seven other people, including a reporter, during a racist shooting spree in a black neighborhood in Jackson, Miss. As police close in on the abandoned restaurant he is shooting from, Shoemake, who is white, sets the restaurant on fire and kills himself. A search of his home finds references to "Separation or Annihilation," an essay on race relations by neo-Nazi National Alliance leader William Pierce, along with an arsenal of weapons that includes 17 long guns, 20,000 rounds of ammunition, and countless military manuals.

April 26, 1996
Two leaders of the Militia-at-Large of the Republic of Georgia, Robert Edward Starr III and William James McCranie Jr., are charged with manufacturing shrapnel-packed pipe bombs for distribution to militia members. Later in the year, they are sentenced to terms of up to eight years. Another Militia-at-Large member, Troy Allen Kayser (alias Troy Spain), is arrested two weeks later and accused of training a team to assassinate politicians. Starr is released from prison in 2003, while McCranie gets out in 2001. Kayser, convicted of conspiracy, is released in early 2002.

July 1, 1996
Twelve members of an Arizona militia group called the Viper Team are arrested on federal conspiracy, weapons and explosive charges after allegedly surveilling and videotaping government buildings as potential targets. All 12 plead guilty or are convicted of various charges, drawing sentences of up to nine years in prison. The plot participants are all released in subsequent years. Gary Curds Baer, who drew the heaviest sentence after being found with 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a bomb component, is freed in May 2004.

July 27, 1996
A nail-packed bomb goes off at the Atlanta Olympics, which are seen by many extremists as part of a Satanic "New World Order," killing one person and injuring more than 100 others. Investigators will later conclude the attack is linked to 1997-1998 bombings of an Atlanta-area abortion clinic, an Atlanta gay bar and a Birmingham, Ala., abortion facility. Suspect Eric Robert Rudolph — a reclusive North Carolina man tied to the anti-Semitic Christian Identity theology — flees into the woods of his native state after he is identified in early 1998 as a suspect in the Birmingham attack, and is only captured five years later. Eventually, he pleads guilty to all of the attacks attributed to him in exchange for life without parole.

July 29, 1996
Washington State Militia leader John Pitner and seven others are arrested on weapons and explosives charges in connection with a plot to build pipe bombs to resist a feared invasion by the United Nations. Pitner and four others are convicted on weapons charges, while conspiracy charges against all eight end in a mistrial. Pitner is later retried on that charge, convicted and sentenced to four years in prison. He is released in 2001.

October 8, 1996
Three "Phineas Priests" — racist and anti-Semitic Christian Identity terrorists who feel they've been called by God to undertake violent attacks — are charged in connection with two bank robberies and bombings at the two banks, a Spokane newspaper and a Planned Parenthood office. Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Jay Merrell are eventually convicted and sentenced to life terms. Brian Ratigan, a fourth member of the group arrested separately, draws a 55-year term; he is scheduled for release in 2045.

October 11, 1996
Seven members of the Mountaineer Militia are arrested in a plot to blow up the FBI's national fingerprint records center, where 1,000 people work, in West Virginia. In 1998, leader Floyd "Ray" Looker is sentenced to 18 years in prison, with a release date of 2012. Two other defendants are sentenced on explosives charges and a third draws a year in prison for providing blueprints of the FBI facility to Looker, who then sold them to a government informant who was posing as a terrorist.

January 16, 1997
Two anti-personnel bombs — the second clearly designed to kill arriving law enforcement and rescue workers — explode outside an abortion clinic in Sandy Springs, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. Seven people are injured. Letters signed by the "Army of God" claim responsibility for this attack and another, a month later, at an Atlanta gay bar. Authorities later learn that these attacks, the 1998 bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., abortion clinic and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing, were all carried out by Eric Robert Rudolph, who is captured in 2003 after five years on the run. Rudolph avoids the death penalty by pleading guilty in exchange for a life sentence, but simultaneously releases a defiant statement defending his attacks.

January 22, 1997
Authorities raid the Martinton, Ill., home of former Marine Ricky Salyers, an alleged Ku Klux Klan member, discovering 35,000 rounds of heavy ammunition, armor piercing shells, smoke and tear gas grenades, live shells for grenade launchers, artillery shells and other military gear. Salyers was discharged earlier from the Marines, where he taught demolitions and sniping, after tossing a live grenade (with the pin still in) at state police officers serving him with a search warrant in 1995. Following the 1997 raid, Salyers, an alleged member of the underground Black Dawn group of extremists in the military, is sentenced to serve three years for weapons violations. He is released from prison in 2000.

March 26, 1997
Militia activist Brendon Blasz is arrested in Kalamazoo, Mich., and charged with making pipe bombs and other illegal explosives. Prosecutors say Blasz plotted to bomb the federal building in Battle Creek, the IRS building in Portage, a Kalamazoo television station and federal armories. But they recommend leniency on his explosives conviction after Blasz, a member of the Michigan Militia Corps Wolverines, renounces his antigovernment beliefs and cooperates with them. He is sentenced to more than three years in federal prison and released in late 1999.

April 22, 1997
Three Ku Klux Klan members are arrested in a plot to blow up a natural gas refinery outside Fort Worth, Texas, after local Klan leader Robert Spence gets cold feet and goes to the FBI. The three, along with a fourth arrested later, expected to kill a huge number of people with the blast — authorities later say as many as 30,000 might have died — which was to serve, incredibly, as a diversion for a simultaneous armored car robbery. Among the victims would have been children at a nearby school. All four plead guilty to conspiracy charges and are sentenced to terms of up to 20 years. Spence enters the Witness Protection Program. Carl Jay Waskom Jr. is released in 2004, while Shawn and Catherine Adams, a couple, are freed in 2006. Edward Taylor Jr. is released in early 2007.

April 23, 1997
Florida police arrest Todd Vanbiber, a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance's Tampa unit and the shadowy League of the Silent Soldier, after he accidentally sets off pipe bombs he was building, blasting shrapnel into his own face. He is accused of plotting to use the bombs on the approach to Disney World to divert attention from a planned string of bank robberies. Vanbiber pleads guilty to weapons and explosives charges and is sentenced to more than six years in federal prison. He is released in 2002. Within two years, Vanbiber is posting messages on neo-Nazi Internet sites boasting that he has built over 300 bombs successfully and only made one error, and describing mass murderer Timothy McVeigh as a hero.

April 27, 1997
After a cache of explosives stored in a tree blows up near Yuba City, Calif., police arrest Montana Freemen supporter William Robert Goehler. Investigators looking into the blast arrest two Goehler associates, one of them a militia leader, after finding 500 pounds of explosives — enough to level three city blocks — in a motor home parked outside their residence. Six others are arrested on related charges. Goehler, with previous convictions for rape, burglary and assault, is sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He is later accused of stabbing his attorney with a shank and charged with attacking prison psychologists.

May 3, 1997
Antigovernment extremists set fire to the IRS office in Colorado Springs, Colo., causing $2.5 million in damage and injuring a firefighter. Federal agents later arrest five men in connection with the arson, which is conceived as a protest against the tax system. Ringleader James Cleaver, former national director of the antigovernment Sons of Liberty group, is accused of threatening a witness and eventually sentenced to 33 years in prison, with a release date of 2030. Accomplice Jack Dowell receives 30 years and is scheduled to be freed in 2027. Both are ordered to pay $2.2 million in restitution. Dowell's cousin is acquitted of all charges, while two other suspects, Ronald Sherman and Thomas Shafer, plead guilty to perjury charges in connection with the case.

July 4, 1997
Militiaman Bradley Playford Glover and another heavily armed antigovernment activist are arrested before dawn near Fort Hood, in central Texas, just hours before they planned to invade the Army base and slaughter foreign troops they mistakenly believed were housed there. In the next few days, five other people are arrested in several states for their alleged roles in the plot to invade a series of military bases where the group believes United Nations forces are massing for an assault on Americans. All seven are part of a splinter group from the Third Continental Congress, a kind of militia government-in-waiting. In the end, Glover is sentenced to two years on Kansas weapons charges, to be followed by a five-year federal term in connection with the Fort Hood plot. The others draw lesser terms. Glover is released in 2003, the last of the seven to get out.

December 12, 1997
A federal grand jury in Arkansas indicts three men on racketeering charges for plotting to overthrow the government and create a whites-only Aryan People's Republic, which they intend to grow through polygamy. Chevie Kehoe, Daniel Lee and Faron Lovelace are accused of crimes in six states, including murder, kidnapping, robbery and conspiracy. Kehoe and Lee will also face state charges of murdering an Arkansas family, including an 8-year-old girl, in 1996. Kehoe ultimately receives a life sentence on that charge, while Lee is sentenced to death. Lovelace is sentenced to death for the murder of a suspected informant, but because of court rulings is later resentenced to life without parole. Kehoe's brother, Cheyne, is convicted of attempted murder during a 1997 Ohio shootout with police and sentenced to 24 years in prison, despite his helping authorities track down his fugitive brother in Utah after the shootout. Cheyne went to the authorities after Chevie began talking about murdering their parents and showing sexual interest in Cheyne's wife.

January 29, 1998
An off-duty police officer is killed and a nurse terribly maimed when a nail-packed, remote-control bomb explodes outside a Birmingham, Ala., abortion facility, the New Woman All Women clinic. Letters to media outlets and officials claim responsibility in the name of the "Army of God," the same entity that took credit for the bombings of a clinic and a gay bar in the Atlanta area. The attack also will be linked to the fatal 1996 bombing of the Atlanta Olympics. Eric Robert Rudolph, a loner from North Carolina, is first identified as a suspect when witnesses spot his pickup truck fleeing the Birmingham bombing. But he is not caught until 2003. He ultimately pleads guilty to all four attacks in exchange for a life sentence.

February 23, 1998
Three men with links to a Ku Klux Klan group are arrested near East St. Louis, Ill., on weapons charges. The three, along with three other men arrested later, formed a group called The New Order, patterned on a 1980s terror group called The Order (a.k.a. the Silent Brotherhood) that carried out assassinations and armored car heists. New Order members plotted to assassinate a federal judge and civil rights lawyer Morris Dees, blow up the Southern Poverty Law Center that Dees co-founded and other buildings, poison water supplies and rob banks. Wallace Weicherding, one of the men, came to a 1997 Dees speech with a concealed gun but turned back rather than pass through a metal detector. In the end, all six plead guilty or are convicted of weapons charges, drawing terms of up to seven years in federal prison. New Order leader Dennis McGiffen is released in 2004, the last of the six to regain his freedom.

March 18, 1998
Three members of the North American Militia of Southwestern Michigan are arrested on firearms and other charges. Prosecutors say the men conspired to bomb federal buildings, a Kalamazoo television station and an interstate highway interchange, kill federal agents, assassinate politicians and attack aircraft at a National Guard base — attacks that were all to be funded by marijuana sales. The group's leader, Ken Carter, is a self-described member of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations. Carter pleads guilty, testifies against his former comrades, and is sentenced to five years in prison. The others, Randy Graham and Bradford Metcalf, go to trial and are ultimately handed sentences of 40 and 55 years, respectively. Carter is released from prison in 2002.

May 29, 1998
A day after stealing a water truck, three men shoot and kill a Cortez, Colo., police officer and wound two other officers as they try to stop the suspects during a road chase. After the gun battle, the three — Alan Monty Pilon, Robert Mason and Jason McVean — disappear into the canyons of the high desert. Mason is found a week later, dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot. The skeletal remains of Pilon are found in 1999 and show that he, too, died of a gunshot to the head, another apparent suicide. McVean is not found, but most authorities assume he died in the desert. Many officials believe the three men intended to use the water truck in some kind of terrorist attack, but the nature of their suspected plans is never learned.

July 1, 1998
Three men are charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction after threatening President Clinton and other federal officials with biological weapons. Officials say the men planned to use a cactus thorn coated with a toxin like anthrax and fired by a modified butane lighter to carry out the murders. One man is acquitted of the charges, but Jack Abbot Grebe Jr., and Johnnie Wise — a 72-year-old man who attended meetings of the separatist Republic of Texas group —are sentenced to more than 24 years in prison. The men are set for release in 2019.

July 30, 1998
South Carolina militia member Paul T. Chastain is charged with weapons, explosives and drug violations after allegedly trying to trade drugs for a machine gun and enough C-4 plastic explosive to demolish a five-room house. The next year, Chastain pleads guilty to an array of charges, including threatening to kill Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh. He is sentenced to 15 years in federal prison, with release scheduled in 2011.

October 23, 1998
Dr. Barnett Slepian is assassinated by a sniper as he talks with his wife and children in the kitchen of their Amherst, N.Y., home. Identified as a suspect shortly after the murder, James Charles Kopp flees to Mexico, driven and disguised by friend Jennifer Rock, and goes on to hide out in Ireland and France. Two fellow anti-abortion extremists, Loretta Marra and Dennis Malvasi, make plans to help Kopp secretly return. Kopp, also suspected in the earlier sniper woundings of four physicians in Canada and upstate New York, is arrested in France as he picks up money wired by Marra and Malvasi. He eventually admits the shooting to a newspaper reporter — claiming that he only intended to wound Slepian — and is sentenced to life in prison plus 10 years. In 2003, Marra and Malvasi are sentenced to time served after pleading guilty to federal charges related to harboring a fugitive.

June 10, 1999
Officials arrest Alabama plumber Chris Scott Gilliam, a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, after he attempts to purchase 10 hand grenades from an undercover federal agent. Gilliam, who months earlier paraded in an extremist T-shirt in front of the Southern Poverty Law Center's offices in Montgomery, tells agents he planned to send mail bombs to targets in Washington, D.C. Agents searching his home find bomb-making manuals, white supremacist literature and an assault rifle. Gilliam pleads guilty to federal firearms charges and is sentenced to 10 years in prison. He is released in early 2008.

July 1, 1999
A gay couple, Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder, are shot to death in bed at their home near Redding, Calif. Days later, after tracking purchases made on Mowder's stolen credit card, police arrest brothers Benjamin Matthew Williams and James Tyler Williams. At least one of the pair, Matthew Williams (both use their middle names), is an adherent of the anti-Semitic Christian Identity theology. Police soon learn that the brothers two weeks earlier carried out arson attacks against three synagogues and an abortion clinic in Sacramento. Both brothers, whose mother at one point refers in a conversation to her sons' victims as "two homos," eventually admit their guilt — in Matthew's case, in a newspaper interview. Matthew, who at one point badly injures a guard in a surprise attack, commits suicide in 2002. Tyler, who pleads guilty to an array of charges in the case, and is given two sentences amounting to 50 years to be served consecutively.

July 2, 1999
Infuriated that neo-Nazi leader Matt Hale has just been denied his law license by Illinois officials, follower Benjamin Nathaniel Smith begins a three-day murder spree across Illinois and Indiana, shooting to death a popular black former college basketball coach and a Korean doctoral student and wounding nine other minorities. Smith kills himself as police close in during a car chase. Hale, the "Pontifex Maximus," or leader, of the World Church of the Creator, at first claims to barely know Smith. But it quickly emerges that Hale has recently given Smith his group's top award and, in fact, spent some 16 hours on the phone with him in the two weeks before Smith's rampage. Conveniently, Hale receives a registered letter from Smith just days after his suicide, informing Hale that Smith is quitting the group because he now sees violence as the only answer.

August 10, 1999
Buford Furrow, a former member of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations who has been living with the widow of slain terrorist leader Bob Mathews, strides into a Jewish community center near Los Angeles and fires more than 70 bullets, wounding three boys, a teenage girl and a woman. He then drives into the San Fernando Valley and murders Filipino-American mailman Joseph Ileto. The next day, Furrow turns himself in, saying he intended to send "a wake-up call to America to kill Jews." Furrow, who has a history of mental illness, eventually pleads guilty and is sentenced to two life terms without parole, plus 110 years in prison.

November 5, 1999
FBI agents arrest James Kenneth Gluck in Tampa, Fla., after he wrote a 10-page letter to judges in Jefferson County, Colo., threatening to "wage biological warfare" on a county justice center. While searching his home, police find the materials needed to make ricin, one of the deadliest poisons known. Gluck later threatens a judge, claiming that he could kill 10,000 people with the chemical. After serving time in federal prison, Gluck is released in early 2001.

December 5, 1999
Two California men, both members of the San Joaquin Militia, are charged with conspiracy in connection with a plot to blow up two 12-million-gallon propane tanks, a television tower and an electrical substation in hopes of provoking an insurrection. In 2001, the former militia leader, Donald Rudolph, pleads guilty to plotting to kill a federal judge and blow up the propane tanks, and testifies against his former comrades. Kevin Ray Patterson and Charles Dennis Kiles are ultimately convicted of several charges in connection with the conspiracy. They are expected to be released from federal prison in 2021 and 2018, respectively.

December 8, 1999
Donald Beauregard, head of a militia coalition known as the Southeastern States Alliance, is charged with conspiracy, providing materials for a terrorist act and gun violations in a plot to bomb energy facilities and cause power outages in Florida and Georgia. After pleading guilty to several charges, Beauregard, who once claimed to have discovered a secret map detailing a planned UN takeover mistakenly printed on a box of Trix cereal, is sentenced to five years in federal prison. He is released in 2004, a year after accomplice James Troy Diver is freed following a similar conviction.

March 9, 2000
Federal agents arrest Mark Wayne McCool, the one-time leader of the Texas Militia and Combined Action Program, as he allegedly makes plans to attack the Houston federal building. McCool, who was arrested after buying powerful C-4 plastic explosives and an automatic weapon from an undercover FBI agent, earlier plotted to attack the federal building with a member of his own group and a member of the antigovernment Republic of Texas, but those two men eventually abandoned the plot. McCool, however, remained convinced the UN had stored a cache of military materiel in the building. In the end, he pleads guilty to federal charges that bring him just six months in jail.

April 28, 2000
Immigration attorney Richard Baumhammers, himself the son of Latvian immigrants, goes on a rampage in the Pittsburgh area against non-whites, killing five people and critically wounding a sixth. Baumhammers had recently started a tiny white supremacist group, the Free Market Party, that demanded an end to non-white immigration into the United States. In the end, the unemployed attorney, who is living with parents at the time of his murder spree, is sentenced to death.

March 1, 2001
As part of an ongoing probe into a white supremacist group, federal and local law enforcement agents raid the Corbett, Ore., home of Fritz Springmeier, seizing equipment to grow marijuana and weapons and racist literature. They also find a binder notebook entitled "Army of God, Yahweh's Warriors" that contains what officials call a list of targets, including a local federal building and the FBI's Oregon offices. Springmeier, an associate of the anti-Semitic Christian Patriots Association, is eventually charged with setting off a diversionary bomb at an adult video store in Damascus, Ore., in 1997 as part of a bank robbery carried out by accomplice Forrest Bateman Jr. Another 2001 raid finds small amounts of bomb materials and marijuana in Bateman's home. Eventually, Bateman pleads guilty to bank robbery and Springmeier is convicted of the same charges. Both are sentenced to nine years, and have release dates in 2011.

April 19, 2001
White supremacists Leo Felton and girlfriend Erica Chase are arrested following a foot chase that began when a police officer spotted them trying to pass counterfeit bills at a Boston donut shop. Investigators quickly learn Felton heads up a tiny group called Aryan Unit One, and that the couple, who had already obtained a timing device, planned to blow up black and Jewish landmarks and possibly assassinate black and Jewish leaders. They also learn another amazing fact: Felton, a self-described Aryan, is secretly biracial. Felton and Chase are eventually convicted of conspiracy, weapons violations and obstruction, and Felton is also convicted of bank robbery and other charges. Felton, who previously served 11 years for assaulting a black taxi driver, is sentenced to serve more than 21 years in federal prison, while his one-time sweetheart draws a lesser sentence and is released in 2007.

October 14, 2001
A North Carolina sheriff's deputy pulls over Steve Anderson, a former "colonel" in the Kentucky Militia, on a routine traffic stop as he heads home to Kentucky from a white supremacist gathering in North Carolina. Anderson, who is an adherent of racist Christian Identity theology and has issued violent threats against officials for months via an illegal pirate radio station, pulls out a semi-automatic weapon and peppers the deputy's car with bullets before driving his truck into the woods and disappearing for 13 months. Officials later find six pipe bombs in Anderson's abandoned truck and 27 bombs and destructive devices in his home. In the end, Anderson apologizes for his actions and pleads guilty. He is sentenced on a variety of firearms charges to 15 years in federal prison.

December 5, 2001
Anti-abortion extremist Clayton Lee Wagner, who nine months earlier escaped from an Illinois jail while awaiting sentencing on weapons and carjacking charges, is arrested in Cincinnati, Ohio. Wagner's odyssey began in September 1999, when he was stopped driving a stolen camper in Illinois and told police he was headed to Seattle to murder an abortion provider. He escaped in February 2001 and, while on the lam, mailed more than 550 hoax anthrax letters to abortion clinics and posted an Internet threat warning abortion clinic workers that "if you work for the murderous abortionist, I'm going to kill you." Wagner is eventually sentenced to 30 years on the Illinois charges. In Ohio, he is sentenced to almost 20 years more, to be served consecutively, on various weapons and car theft charges related to his time on the run. In late 2003, he also is found guilty of 51 federal terrorism charges. He is scheduled to be released in 2046.

December 11, 2001
Jewish Defense League chairman Irving David Rubin and a follower, Earl Leslie Krugel, are arrested in California and charged with conspiring to bomb the offices of U.S. Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Calif.) and the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City. Authorities say a confidential informant taped meetings with the two in which the bombings were discussed and Krugel said the JDL needed "to do something to one of their filthy mosques." Rubin later commits suicide in prison, officials say, just before he is to go on trial in 2002. Krugel pleads guilty to conspiracy in both plots, and testifies that Rubin conspired with him. Krugel dies in prison in 2005.

January 4, 2002
Neo-Nazi National Alliance member Michael Edward Smith is arrested after a car chase in Nashville, Tenn., that began when he was spotted sitting in a car with a semi-automatic rifle pointed at Sherith Israel Pre-School, run by a local synagogue. In Smith's car, home and storage unit, officials find an arsenal that includes a .50-caliber rifle, 10 hand grenades, 13 pipe bombs, binary explosives, semi-automatic pistols, ammunition and an array of military manuals. They also find teenage porn on Smith's computer and evidence that he carried out computer searches for Jewish schools and synagogues. In one of his E-mails, Smith wrote that Jews "perhaps" should be "stuffed head first into an oven." Smith is sentenced to more than 10 years in prison, with an expected release date in 2011.

February 8, 2002
The leader of a militia-like group known as Project 7 and his girlfriend are arrested after an informant tells police the group is plotting to kill judges and law enforcement officers in order to kick off a revolution. David Burgert, who has a record for burglary and is already wanted for assaulting police officers, is found in the house of girlfriend Tracy Brockway along with an arsenal that includes pipe bombs and 25,000 rounds of ammunition. Also found are "intel sheets" with personal information about law enforcement officers, their spouses and children. Although officials are convinced the Project 7 plot was real, Burgert ultimately is convicted only of weapons charges and draws a seven-year sentence; he is to be released in 2010. Six others are also convicted of or plead guilty to weapons charges. Brockway gets a suspended sentence for harboring a fugitive, but is sent to prison for violating its terms. She is released in early 2008.

July 19, 2002
Acting on a tip, federal and local law enforcement agents arrest North Carolina Klan leader Charles Robert Barefoot Jr. for his role in an alleged plot to blow up the Johnson County Sheriff's Office, the sheriff himself and the county jail. Officers find more than two dozen weapons in Barefoot's home. They also find bombs and bomb components in the home of Barefoot's son, Daniel Barefoot, who is charged that same day with the arson of a school bus and an empty barn. The elder Barefoot — who broke away from the National Knights of the KKK several months earlier to form his own harder-line group, the Nation's Knights of the KKK — is charged with weapons violations and later sentenced to more than two years. In 2003, Barefoot's wife and three men, including Barefoot Sr., are charged with the murder of a former Klan member. In 2007, a judge rules Barefoot Sr. mentally incompetent to stand trial for murder and commits him indefinitely to a mental hospital. Sharon Barefoot was released from prison in July 2009.

August 22, 2002
Tampa area podiatrist Robert J. Goldstein is arrested after police, called by Goldstein's wife after he allegedly threatened to kill her, find more than 15 explosive devices in their home, along with materials to make at least 30 more. Also found are homemade C-4 plastic explosives, grenades and mines, a .50-caliber rifle, semi-automatic weapons, and a list of 50 Islamic worship centers in the area. The most significant discovery is a three-page plan detailing plans to "kill all ‘rags'" at the Islamic Society of Pinellas County. Eventually, two other local men are also charged in connection with the plot, and Goldstein's wife is arrested for possessing illegal destructive devices. Goldstein pleads guilty to plotting to blow up the Islamic Society and is sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison, with a release date in 2013. His wife was released in 2006.

October 3, 2002
Officials close in on long-time antigovernment extremist Larry Raugust at a rest stop in Idaho, arrest him and charge him with 16 counts of making and possessing destructive devices, including pipe bombs and pressure-detonated booby traps. He is accused of giving one explosive device to an undercover agent, and is also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot with colleagues in the Idaho Mountain Boys militia to murder a federal judge and a police officer, and to break a friend out of jail. A deadbeat dad, Raugust is also accused of helping plant land mines on property belonging to a friend whose land was seized by authorities over unpaid taxes. He eventually pleads guilty to 15 counts of making bombs and is sentenced to federal prison. Raugust was released in early 2008.

January 8, 2003
Federal agents arrest Matt Hale, the national leader of the neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator (WCOTC), as he reports to a Chicago courthouse in an ongoing copyright case over the name of his group. Hale is charged with soliciting the murder of the federal judge in the case, Joan Humphrey Lefkow, who he has publicly vilified as someone bent on the destruction of his group. (Although Lefkow originally ruled in WCOTC's favor, an appeals court found that the complaint brought by an identically named church in Oregon was legally justified, and Lefkow reversed herself accordingly.) In guarded language captured on tape recordings, Hale is heard agreeing that his security chief, an FBI informant, should kill Lefkow. Hale is found guilty and sentenced to serve 40 years in federal prison; he is not expected to be released until 2037.
January 18, 2003

James D. Brailey, a convicted felon who once was selected as "governor" of the state of Washington by the antigovernment Washington Jural Society, is arrested after a raid on his home turns up a machine gun, an assault rifle and several handguns. One informant tells the FBI that Brailey was plotting to assassinate Gov. Gary Locke, both because Locke was the state's real governor and because he was Chinese-American. A second informant says that Brailey actually went on a "dry run" to Olympia, carrying several guns into the state Capitol building to test security. Eventually, Brailey pleads guilty to weapons charges and is sentenced to serve 15 months in prison. He is released in 2004.

February 13, 2003
Federal agents in Pennsylvania arrest David Wayne Hull, imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and an adherent of the anti-Semitic Christian Identity theology, alleging that Hull arranged to buy hand grenades to blow up abortion clinics. The FBI says Hull also illegally instructed followers on how to build pipe bombs. Hull, who published a newsletter in which he urged readers to write Oklahoma bomber Tim McVeigh "to tell this great man goodbye," is found guilty of weapons violations and sentenced to 12 years in federal prison. He is to be released in 2012.

April 3, 2003
Federal agents arrest antigovernment extremist David Roland Hinkson in Idaho and charge him with trying to hire an assassin on two occasions in 2002 and 2003 to murder a federal judge, a prosecutor and an IRS agent involved in a tax case against him. Hinkson, a businessman who earned millions of dollars from his Water Oz dietary supplement company but refused to pay almost $1 million in federal taxes, is convicted in 2004 of 26 counts related to the tax case. In early 2005, a federal jury finds him guilty in the assassination plot as well. He is not expected to be released until 2040.

April 10, 2003
The FBI raids the Noonday, Texas, home of William Krar and storage facilities that Krar rented in the area, discovering an arsenal that includes more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 65 pipe bombs and remote-control briefcase bombs, and almost two pounds of deadly sodium cyanide. Also found are components to convert the cyanide into a bomb capable of killing thousands, along with white supremacist and antigovernment material. Investigators soon learn Krar was stopped earlier in 2003 by police in Tennessee, who found several weapons and coded documents in his car that seemed to detail a plot. But Krar refuses to cooperate, and details of that alleged plan are never learned. He pleads guilty to possession of a chemical weapon and is sentenced to more than 11 years in prison, where he dies.

June 4, 2003
Federal agents in California announce that former accountant John Noster, in prison since November 2002 for car theft, is under investigation for plotting a major terrorist attack. Noster was first arrested as part of a car theft ring investigation, but officials who found incendiary devices in his stolen camper continued to probe his activities. Eventually, they find in various storage facilities three pipe bombs, six barrels of jet fuel, five assault weapons, cannon fuse, a large amount of ammunition and $188,000 in cash. Law enforcement officials, who describe Noster as an "antigovernment extremist," allege at a press conference that he "was definitely planning" on an attack but do not elaborate. In addition to prison time in that case, Noster draws another five years in 2009, after pleading guilty to two weapons charges.

October 10, 2003
Police arrest Norman Somerville after finding a huge weapons cache on his property in northern Michigan that includes six machine guns, a powerful anti-aircraft gun, thousands of rounds of ammunition, hundreds of pounds of gunpowder, and an underground bunker. They also find two vehicles Somerville calls his "war wagons," and on which prosecutors later say he planned to mount machine guns as part of a plan to stage an auto accident and then massacre arriving police. Officials describe Somerville as an antigovernment extremist enraged over the death of Scott Woodring, a Michigan Militia member killed by police a week after Woodring shot and killed a state trooper during a standoff. Somerville eventually pleads guilty to weapons charges and is sentenced to six years in prison. He is scheduled to be released in late 2009.

April 1, 2004
Neo-Nazi Skinhead Sean Gillespie videotapes himself as he firebombs Temple B'nai Israel, an Oklahoma City synagogue, as part of a film he is preparing to inspire other racists to violent revolution. In it, Gillespie boasts that instead of merely pronouncing the white-supremacist "14 Words" slogan ("We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children"), he will carry out 14 violent attacks. A former member of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, Gillespie is found guilty of the attack and later sentenced to 39 years in federal prison, with an expected release date of 2038.

May 24, 2004
During the attempted robbery of a Tulsa bank by Wade and Christopher Lay, a father-and-son pair of political extremists, security guard Kenneth Anderson is shot to death. Both robbers are wounded, and are arrested a short time after fleeing the bank. At trial, Wade Lay testifies that he and his son acted "for the good of the American people" and in an effort to "preserve liberty." Other evidence shows the pair hoped to get money to pay for weapons that they intended to use to kill Texas officials who they believed were responsible for the deadly 1993 standoff between the authorities and religious cultists in Waco. In the end, Wade Lay is sentenced to death for first-degree murder, while his son gets 25 years for armed robbery.

October 13, 2004
Ivan Duane Braden, a former National Guardsman discharged from an Iraq-bound unit after superiors noted signs of instability, is arrested after checking into a mental health facility and telling counselors about plans to blow up a synagogue and a National Guard armory in Tennessee. The FBI reports that Braden told agents that he planned to go to a synagogue wearing a trench coat stuffed with explosives and get himself "as close to children and the rabbi as possible," a plan Braden also outlined in notes found in his home. In addition, he intended to take and kill hostages at the Lenoir City Armory, before blowing the armory up. Eventually, Braden, who also possessed neo-Nazi literature and reportedly hated blacks and Jews from an early age, pleads guilty to conspiring to blow up the armory. He is sentenced to prison, where his release is expected in 2017.

October 25, 2004
FBI agents in Tennessee arrest farmhand Demetrius "Van" Crocker after he tried to purchase ingredients for deadly sarin nerve gas and C-4 plastic explosives from an undercover agent. The FBI reports that Crocker, who local officials say was involved in a white supremacist group in the 1980s, tells the agent that he admires Hitler and hates Jews and the government. He also says "it would be a good thing if somebody could detonate some sort of weapon of mass destruction on Washington, D.C." Crocker is convicted of trying to get explosives to destroy a building and imprisoned until an expected release in 2030.

May 20, 2005
Officials in New Jersey arrest two men they say asked a police informant to build them a bomb. Craig Orler, who has a history of burglary arrests, and Gabriel Carafa, said to be a leader of the neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator and a member of a racist Skinhead group called The Hated, are charged with illegally selling 11 guns to police informants. Carafa gave one informant 60 pounds of urea to use in building him a bomb, but never said what the bomb was for. Police say they moved in before the alleged bombing plot developed further because they were concerned about the pair's activities. They taped Orler saying in a phone call that he was seeking people in Europe to help him go underground. Orler is sentenced to more than 10 years in prison, while Carafa draws seven.

June 10, 2005
Daniel J. Schertz, a former member of the North Georgia White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, is indicted in Chattanooga, Tenn., on federal weapons charges for allegedly making seven pipe bombs and selling them to an undercover informant with the idea that they would be used to murder Mexican and Haitian immigrant workers. The informant says Schertz demonstrated how to attach the pipe bombs to cars, then sold him bombs that Schertz expected to be used against a group of Haitians and, separately, Mexican workers on a bus headed to work in Florida. Schertz eventually pleads guilty to six charges — including teaching how to make an explosive device; making, possessing and transferring destructive devices; and possessing a pistol with armor-piercing bullets — and is sentenced to 14 years in prison. He is to be released in 2017.

March 19, 2006
U.S. Treasury agents in Utah arrest David J. D'Addabbo for allegedly threatening Internal Revenue Service employees with "death by firing squad" if they continued to try to collect taxes from him and his wife. D'Addabbo, who was reportedly carrying a Glock pistol, 40 rounds of ammunition and a switchblade knife when he was seized leaving a church service, allegedly wrote to the U.S. Tax Court that anyone attempting to collect taxes would be tried by a "jury of common people. You then could be found guilty of treason and immediately taken to a firing squad." In August D'Addabbo pleads guilty to one charge of threatening a government agent in exchange for the dismissal of three other charges of threatening IRS agents. He is sentenced to time served and released the same year as his arrest.

April 26, 2007
Five members of the Alabama Free Militia are arrested in north Alabama in a raid by federal and state law enforcement officers that uncovers a cache of 130 homemade hand grenades, an improvised grenade launcher, a Sten Mark submachine gun, a silencer, 2,500 rounds of ammunition and almost 100 marijuana plants. Raymond Kirk Dillard, the founder and "commander" of the group, pleads guilty to criminal conspiracy, illegally making and possessing destructive devices and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Other members of the group — Bonnell "Buster" Hughes, James Ray McElroy, Adam Lynn Cunningham and Randall Garrett — also plead guilty to related charges. Although Dillard, who complained about the collapse of the American economy, terrorist attacks and Mexicans taking over the country, reportedly told his troops to open fire on federal agents if ever confronted, no shots are fired during the April raid, and the "commander" even points out booby-trap tripwires on his property to investigators. Dillard and Garrett draw the harshest sentences, with releases scheduled for 2012 and 2018, respectively.

June 8, 2008
Six people, most of them tied to the militia movement, are arrested in rural north-central Pennsylvania after officials find stockpiles of assault rifles, improvised explosives and homemade weapons, at least some of them apparently intended for terrorist attacks on U.S. officials. Agents find 16 homemade bombs during a search of the residence of Pennsylvania Citizens Militia recruiter Bradley T. Kahle, who allegedly tells authorities that he intended to shoot black people from a rooftop in Pittsburgh and also predicts civil war if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton are elected president. A raid on the property of Morgan Jones results in the seizure of 73 weapons, including a homemade flame thrower, a machine that supposedly shot bolts of electricity, and an improvised cannon. Also arrested and charged with weapons violations are Marvin E. Hall, his girlfriend Melissa Huet and Perry Landis. Landis, who is to be sentenced in late 2009, allegedly tells undercover agents he wanted to kill Gov. Ed Rendell. Hall is sentenced to more than two years.

August 24, 2008
White supremacists Shawn Robert Adolf, Tharin Robert Gartrell and Nathan D. Johnson are arrested in Denver during the Democratic National Convention on weapons charges and for possession of amphetamines. Although police say they talked about assassinating presidential candidate Barack Obama, they are not charged in connection with that threat because officials see their talk as drug-fueled boasting. Police report the three had high-powered, scoped rifles, wigs, camouflage clothing and a bulletproof vest, along with the crystal methamphetamine. Gartrell is released from prison in June 2009, while Johnson is to be freed in 2010. Adolf, who was already wanted on other charges, draws a longer sentence.

 October 24, 2008
Two white supremacists, Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman, are arrested in Tennessee for allegedly plotting to assassinate Barack Obama and murder more than 100 black people. Officials say Schlesselman and Cowart, a probationary member of the racist skinhead group Supreme White Alliance, planned to kill 88 people, then behead another 14. (Both numbers are significant in white supremacist circles. H is the eighth letter of the alphabet, so double 8s stand for HH, or "Heil Hitler." The number 14 represents the "14 Words," a popular racist saying.) The pair are indicted on charges that include threatening a presidential candidate, possessing a sawed-off shotgun, taking firearms across state lines to commit crimes, planning to rob a licensed gun dealer, damaging religious property, and using a firearm during the commission of a crime.

December 9, 2008
Police responding to a shooting at a home in Belfast, Maine, find James G. Cummings dead, allegedly killed by his wife after years of domestic abuse. They also find a cache of radioactive materials, which Cummings was apparently using to try to build a radioactive "dirty bomb," along with literature on how to build such a deadly explosive. Police also discover a membership application filled out by Cummings for the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement. Friends say that Cummings had a collection of Nazi memorabilia. The authorities say Cummings was reportedly "very upset" by the election of Barack Obama.

December 16, 2008
Kody Ray Brittingham, a lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps, is arrested with four others on attempted robbery charges. A search of his barracks room at Camp Lejeune, N.C., allegedly turns up white supremacist materials and a journal written by Brittingham containing plans to kill Barack Obama. Brittingham is indicted for threatening the president-elect of the United States, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

January 21, 2009
On the day after Barack Obama is inaugurated as the nation's first black president, Keith Luke of Brockton, Mass., is arrested after allegedly shooting three black immigrants from Cape Verde, killing two of them, as part of a racially motivated killing spree. The two murders are apparently only part of Luke's plan to kill black, Latino and Jewish people. After being captured by police, he reportedly says he planned to go to an Orthodox synagogue near his home that night and "kill as many Jews as possible." Police say Luke, a white man who apparently had no contact with white supremacists but spent the previous six months reading racist websites, told them he was "fighting for a dying race." Luke also says he formed his racist views in large part after watching videos on Podblanc, a racist video-sharing website run by longtime white supremacist Craig Cobb. When he later appears in court for a hearing, Luke, charged with murder, kidnapping and aggravated rape, has etched a swastika into his own forehead, apparently using a jail razor.

April 4, 2009
Three Pittsburgh police officers — Paul Sciullo III, Stephen Mayhle and Eric Kelly — are fatally shot and a fourth, Timothy McManaway, is wounded after responding to a domestic dispute at the home of Richard Andrew Poplawski, who had posted his racist and anti-Semitic views on white supremacist websites. In one post, Poplawski talks about wanting a white supremacist tattoo. He also reportedly tells a friend that America is controlled by a cabal of Jews, that U.S. troops may soon be used against American citizens, and that he fears a ban on guns is coming. Poplawski later allegedly tells investigators that he fired extra bullets into the bodies of two of the officers "just to make sure they were dead" and says he "thought I got that one, too" when told that the fourth officer survived. More law enforcement officers are killed during the incident than in any other single act of violence by a domestic political extremist since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

April 25, 2009
Joshua Cartwright, a Florida National Guardsman, allegedly shoots to death two Okaloosa County, Fla., sheriff's deputies — Burt Lopez and Warren "Skip" York — at a gun range as the officers attempt to arrest Cartwright on domestic violence charges. After fleeing the scene, Cartwright is fatally shot during a gun battle with pursuing officers. Cartwright's wife later tells investigators that her husband was "severely disturbed" that Barack Obama has been elected president. He also reportedly believed the U.S. government was conspiring against him. The sheriff tells reporters that Cartwright had been interested in joining a militia group.

May 31, 2009
Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion extremist who was involved with the antigovernment "freemen" movement in the 1990s, allegedly shoots to death Kansas late-term abortion provider George Tiller as the doctor is serving as an usher in his Wichita church. Adherents of "freemen" ideology claim they are "sovereign citizens" not subject to federal and other laws, and often form their own "common law" courts and issue their own license plates. It was one of those homemade plates that led Topeka police to stop Roeder in April 1996, when a search of his trunk revealed a pound of gunpowder, a 9-volt battery wired to a switch, blasting caps and ammunition. A prosecutor in that case called Roeder a "substantial threat to public safety," citing Roeder's refusal to acknowledge the court's authority. But his conviction in the 1996 case is ultimately overturned. In the more recent case, Roeder is charged with murder and could face up to life in prison if convicted.

June 10, 2009
Eighty-eight-year-old James von Brunn, a longtime neo-Nazi, walks up to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and allegedly shoots to death security guard Stephen Johns before he is himself shot and critically wounded by other officers. Von Brunn, who earlier served six years in connection with his 1981 attempt to kidnap the members of the Federal Reserve Board at the point of a sawed-off shotgun, has been active in the white supremacist movement for more than four decades. As early as the early 1970s, he worked at the Holocaust-denying Noontide Press, and in subsequent decades, he comes to know many of the key leaders of the radical right. A search of von Brunn's car after the museum attack turns up a list of other apparent targets, including the White House, the Capitol, the National Cathedral and The Washington Post. A note allegedly left by von Brunn in his car reads: "You want my weapons; this is how you'll get them … the Holocaust is a lie … Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do. Jews captured America's money. Jews control the mass media." He is charged with murder.

June 12, 2009
Shawna Forde — the executive director of Minutemen American Defense (MAD), an anti-immigrant vigilante group that conducts "citizen patrols" on the Arizona-Mexico border — is charged with two counts of first-degree murder for her alleged role in the slayings of a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter in Arivaca, Ariz. Forde allegedly orchestrated the May 30 home invasion because she believed the man was a narcotics trafficker and wanted to steal drugs and cash to fund her group. Authorities say the murders, including the killing of the child, were part of the plan. Also arrested and charged with murder are the alleged triggerman, MAD Operations Director Jason Eugene "Gunny" Bush, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, a local member of MAD. Authorities say that Bush had ties to the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations in Idaho, and that Forde has spoken of recruiting its members.

June 25, 2009
Longtime white supremacist Dennis Mahon and his brother Daniel are indicted in Arizona in connection with a mail bomb sent in 2004 to a diversity office in Scottsdale that injured three people. Mahon, formerly tied to the neo-Nazi White Aryan Resistance (WAR) group, allegedly left a phone message at the office saying that "the White Aryan Resistance is growing in Scottsdale. There's a few white people who are standing up." In a related raid, agents search the Indiana home of Tom Metzger, founder of WAR, but he is not arrested. On the same day, white supremacist Robert Joos is arrested in rural Missouri, apparently because phone records show that Dennis Mahon's first call after the mail bombing was to Joos' cell phone. Joos is charged with being a felon in possession of firearms and is sentenced in May 2010 to 6½ years in prison. Dennis Mahon is found guilty of three bombing charges in February 2012 and faces a maximum 60 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Daniel Mahon is acquitted of the one charge against him.

Feb. 18, 2010
Joseph Andrew Stack, who had earlier attended meetings of radical anti-tax groups in California, sets fire to his own house and then flies his single-engine plane into an Austin, Texas, building housing IRS offices. Stack and an IRS manager are killed, and 13 others are injured. Stack leaves a long online rant about the IRS and the tax code, politicians and corporations.

March 25, 2010
A man later identified as Brody James Whitaker opens fire on two Florida state troopers during a routine traffic stop on I-75 in Sumter County. Whitaker flees, crashing his vehicle and continuing on foot. He is arrested two weeks later in Connecticut, where he challenges the authority of a judge and declares himself a “sovereign,” not American, citizen. Sovereigns typically believe that police have no right to regulate road travel. Whitaker is later extradited to Florida to face charges of assaulting and fleeing from a police officer.

March 27-28, 2010
Nine members of the Hutaree Militia are arrested in raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana and charged with seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction. The group, whose website said it was preparing for the imminent arrival of the anti-Christ, allegedly planned to murder a Michigan police officer, then use bombs and homemade missiles to kill other officers attending the funeral, all in a bid to set off a war with the government. . Joshua Clough pleads guilty to a weapons charge in December 2011. A federal judge dismisses charges against seven members of the group during a trial in March 2012, saying their hatred of law enforcement did not amount to a conspiracy. Militia leader David Stone and his son Joshua Stone plead guilty to gun charges two days after the trial. Another member, Jacob Ward, awaits a separate trial.

April 15, 2010
Matthew Fairfield, who is president of a local chapter of an antigovernment “Patriot” organization called the Oath Keepers, is indicted on 28 explosives charges, 25 counts of receiving stolen property and one count of possessing criminal tools. Authorities searching his home discover a napalm bomb built by Fairfield, along with a computer carrying child pornography. Fairfield later pleads guilty to explosives charges, but still faces trial on other counts.

April 30, 2010
Darren Huff, an Oath Keeper from Georgia, is arrested and charged with planning the armed takeover of a Madisonville, Tenn., courthouse and “arrest” of 24 local, state and federal officials. Authorities say Huff was angry about the April 1 arrest there of Walter Francis Fitzpatrick III, a leader of the far-right American Grand Jury movement that seeks to have grand juries indict President Obama for treason. Several others in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement accuse Huff of white supremacist and anti-Semitic attitudes in Internet postings. He is sentenced in May 2012 to four years in federal prison.

May 10, 2010
Sandlin Matthew Smith detonates a pipe bomb at a rear entrance to a mosque in Jacksonville, Fla., while worshippers are inside. Armed only with a fuzzy videotape, authorities only identify Smith, based on talking to witnesses to whom he admits the attack, a year later. They track Smith, a bus driver from Julington Creek, Fla., to a campsite near Fairview, Okla., where he resists arrest with a gun and is killed. A search of Smith’s two homes turns up explosive materials.

May 20, 2010
A father and son team of “sovereign citizens” who believe police have no right to regulate road travel murder West Memphis, Ark., police officers Robert Brandon Paudert, 39, and Thomas William “Bill” Evans, 38, during a routine traffic stop on an I-40 exit ramp. The incident begins when Jerry Kane, 45, starts to argue with the officers over his bogus vehicle paperwork and then pushes Evans into a roadside ditch. Kane’s 16-year-old son then kills both officers with an AK-47 before the pair flees. Authorities catch up with them about 45 minutes later. In the ensuing shootout, two more officers are badly wounded and both Kanes are killed. The pair had been traveling the country offering seminars in bogus sovereign techniques for avoiding foreclosure and related matters.

June 8, 2010
A bomb packed into a soda can is planted outside Osage Baptist Church in Carroll City, Ark., where a polling station for a Democratic Senate primary runoff between Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Lt. Gov. Bill Halter is located. The device does not explode, although authorities say it was capable of causing death or serious bodily injury. Officials later receive a tip from contractors who hired to clean out the foreclosed home of self-described “Patriot” Mark Krause, where they find bomb-making materials, manuals, and materials related to antigovernment militias. Krause, who earlier posted antigovernment messages to MySpace, eventually is arrested in Seattle.

July 18, 2010
An unemployed parolee with two bank robbery convictions, apparently enraged at liberals and what he sees as the “left-wing agenda” of Congress, allegedly opens fire on California Highway Patrol troopers who pull him over in Oakland. No one is killed, but two troopers are slightly injured and Byron Williams is shot in the arms and legs. Williams allegedly later tells authorities that he was on his way to attack offices of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tides Foundation, a liberal organization that, although little known to most Americans, has been repeatedly pilloried on air by Fox News host Glenn Beck.

July 21, 2010
Attorney Todd Getgen is shot to death at a gun range in Cumberland County, Penn., and his weapon, a silenced AR-15 rifle, is stolen. Authorities arrest prison guard Raymond Peake nine days later, saying Peake was trying to accumulate weapons for an unnamed organization that intended to overthrow the government. Fellow prison guard Thomas Tuso is also arrested for allegedly helping Peake hide Getgen’s custom-built weapon.

August 30, 2010
White supremacist Wayde Lynn Kurt is arrested in Spokane, Wash., on federal gun and forgery charges. Authorities later release audio recordings to support their allegation that he was planning a terrorist attack he called his "final solution," which included killing President Obama. Wayde, a convicted felon who is associated with neo-Nazis and Odinists, is sentenced in May 2012 to 13 years in prison on firearms and false identification convictions after federal prosecutors sought and received a “terrorism enhancement” to his sentence.

Sept. 2, 2010
A pipe bomb is thrown through the window of a closed Planned Parenthood clinic in Madera, Calif., along with a note that reads, “Murder our children? We have a ‘choice’ too.” The note is signed ANB, apparently short for the American Nationalist Brotherhood. Six months later, law enforcement officials arrest school bus driver Donny Eugene Mower, who allegedly also threatened a local Islamic Center and has the word “Peckerwood,” a reference to a white supremacist gang, tattooed on his chest. Mower reportedly confesses to the attack.

Sept. 7, 2010
The FBI arrests 26-year-old Justin Carl Moose, a self-described “freedom fighter” and “Christian counterpart to Osama bin Laden,” for allegedly planning to blow up a North Carolina abortion clinic. After earlier receiving tips that Moose was posting threats of violence against abortion providers and information about explosives on his Facebook page, the FBI set up a sting operation to capture him. Moose later pleads guilty to distributing information on manufacturing and use of an explosive and is sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Sept. 19, 2010
An antigovernment extremist with ties to the separatist Republic of Texas organization allegedly opens fire on an oil company worker and two sheriff’s deputies who show up at White’s property in West Odessa, Texas, to access an oil well to which the company has rights. Victor White, 55, allegedly wounds all three men before they retreat, and a 22-hour standoff follows. White eventually surrenders and is charged with three counts of attempted capital murder of a peace officer, one count of attempted capital murder, and aggravated assault.

Jan. 14, 2011
Federal agents in Arizona arrest Jeffery Harbin, a member of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, for allegedly building homemade grenades and pipe bombs that he apparently intended to supply to anti-immigration groups patrolling the Mexican border. A prosecutor says that Harbin constructed the devices, using model rocket engines and aluminum power, "in such a way as to maximize human carnage." Harbin is indicted on two counts of possessing a destructive device and a third of transporting destructive devices. Jeffery Harbin is the son of Jerry Harbin, a Phoenix-area activist with past ties to the neo-Nazi National Alliance and the racist Council of Conservative Citizens.

Jan. 17, 2011
Bomb technicians defuse a sophisticated improvised explosive device (IED) found in a backpack along the Spokane, Wash., route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade with 1,500 marchers. Using forensic clues found in the dismantled bomb, officials about two months later identify and arrest Kevin William Harpham, a long-time neo-Nazi. Harpham had posted more than 1,000 messages to the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network since 2004, when he was a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Harpham also had contributed to the white supremacist Aryan Alternative newspaper. He is indicted on one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and one count of possessing an IED. Later, federal hate crime charges are added.

March 10, 2011
Six members of the antigovernment Alaska Peacemakers Militia, including its leader Francis Schaeffer Cox, are arrested and charged with plotting to kill or kidnap state troopers and a Fairbanks judge. The group already has a large cache of weapons, including a .50-caliber machine gun and grenades and a grenade launcher. Cox earlier identified himself as a “sovereign citizen.”

May 14, 2011
Three masked men break into the Madrasah Islamiah, an Islamic center in Houston, and douse prayer rugs with gasoline in an apparent attempt to burn the center down. Images of the men are captured on surveillance cameras, but they are not identified. The fire is put out before doing major damage.

May 25, 2011
A man with a long history of menacing abortion clinics is arrested on weapons charges after he accidentally shoots a pistol through the door of a Madison, Wis., motel room. Ralph Lang, 63, tells police he planned to kill a doctor and workers at a nearby Planned Parenthood clinic.

August 24, 2011
Cody Seth Crawford, 24, is arrested on federal charges accusing him of the Nov. 28, 2010, arson of the Salman Alfarisi Islamic Center in Corvallis, Ore. The firebombing occurred two days after a former Oregon State University student was arrested in a plot to detonate a car bomb during Portland's annual tree-lighting. Crawford had ranted about Muslims and described himself as a Christian warrior during previous run-ins with police.

October 5, 2011
White supremacist ex-convict David "Joey" Pedersen, 31, and his girlfriend, Holly Ann Grigsby, 24, are arrested in California after a murderous rampage in three states. Grigsby tells police that she and Pedersen "were on their way to Sacramento to kill more Jews." The first killed were Pedersen's father and stepmother in Everett, Wash. Another man was killed in Lafayette, Ore., because the pair thought he was Jewish. An African-American man was found shot to death in Eureka, Calif. Pederson earlier served time for threatening to kill the federal judge who handled the Ruby Ridge case of white separatist Randy Weaver. Pederson pleads guilty in March 2012. He will receive a mandatory life sentence without possibility of parole. Grigsby pleads not guilty and awaits trial.

November 1, 2011
Four members of an unnamed North Georgia militia are arrested in an alleged plot to bomb federal buildings, attack cities including Atlanta with deadly ricin, and murder law enforcement officials. The men – Frederick Thomas, 73, Samuel J. Crump, 68, Dan Roberts, 67, and Ray H. Adams, 65 – allegedly discussed dispersing ricin powder in a series of cities, "taking out" a list of officials to "make the country right again," and scouting buildings in Atlanta to bomb. Authorities say the plot was inspired by an online novel, Absolved, written by longtime Alabama militiaman Mike Vanderboegh. Thomas, the accused ringleader, and Roberts plead guilty in April 2012 to charges of conspiring to possess explosives and firearms.

April 17, 2012
Joseph Benjamin Thomas and Samuel James Johnson of Mendota Heights, Minn., are indicted on federal weapons and drug charges following a federal investigation into their alleged plans to form a white supremacist group called the "Aryan Liberation Movement" and commit violence against minorities, leftists and government officials. Prosecutors allege that Thomas planned to attack the Mexican consulate in St. Paul on May 1 with a truck loaded with barrels of oil and gas that he would set on fire, believing that the attack would stir debate on immigration amnesty prior to the 2012 elections. An affidavit unsealed in federal court reveals that Johnson, a former leader of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement in Minnesota with past convictions for armed crimes, was trying to recruit others to his cause and scouted for a training compound in Illinois and Minnesota. Johnson pleads not guilty and awaits trial."

Despite Republican dismissal of these incidents as domestic terrorism, and their denigration of the DHS report, these are the facts, and as we all know, facts have a liberal bias.