Extremists keep trying to trigger mass blackouts — and that’s not even the scariest part

Maryland’s top utility regulator was watching the news one February morning when a headline blindsided him: Two suspects with neo-Nazi ties had been charged with plotting to take down Baltimore’s power grid.

Jason Stanek, the then-chair of the state’s Public Service Commission, said Maryland regulators were “caught flat-footed,” not hearing a word from law enforcement before the news broke — or in the months afterward. Federal prosecutors have alleged the defendants were driven by “racially motivated hatred” to try to cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in the state’s largest city, which has a predominantly Black population.

Growing Russian and Chinese influence could spark extremism, task force says

Russia’s and China’s expanding economic and military reach could foster extremism in developing nations, and the U.S. must engage the rest of the world in trying to prevent that threat from materializing, a task force spearheaded by the leaders of the 9/11 Commission argues in a new report.

The report, released Tuesday, the 17th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, comes as President Donald Trump has pursued overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin and other autocrats, tried to slash foreign aid spending and broken with America’s traditional democratic allies to an unusual degree.

Islamic Extremism Is a Product of Western Imperialism

As we struggle to come to terms with the latest terrorist attacks in Brussels, it is important that we understand the causes of such extremism. After all, Islamic extremism was virtually unknown fifty years ago and suicide bombings were inconceivable. And yet today it seems that we are confronted with both on a daily basis. So what happened to bring Islamic fundamentalism to the forefront of global politics? While there are many factors involved, undoubtedly one of the primary causes is Western imperialism. Western intervention in the Middle East over the past century to secure access to the region’s oil reserves established a perfect environment in which Islamic fundamentalists could exploit growing anti-Western sentiment throughout the Islamic world, with some establishing violent extremist groups. The most recent consequence of this process is the terrorist group known as the Islamic State, which emerged out of the chaos caused by the US invasion of Iraq.

A New Alabama Law Lets Judges Appoint Lawyers for Fetuses. Here's What That Looks Like.

This spring, Alabama Republicans passed an extreme new law that would force minors who want to have an abortion without a parent's permission to undergo a grueling court trial—and it would give judges the right to appoint a lawyer for the fetus. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal court to block the law, prompting national headlines.

But years before Alabama passed this new law, some state judges were already appointing lawyers for fetuses. The results weren't pretty.

The Method To Steve King's Madness

The most notorious moment of Representative Steve King's career was cleverly calculated.

The immigration debate had undergone a sea change in favor of reform, with bipartisan Senate passage of a sweeping bill in the months after Hispanics carried President Obama to a resounding reelection victory. The No. 2 Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, kept up the pressure on the House by delivering speeches arguing that young undocumented "Dreamers" were some of the finest in society — high school valedictorians, even, who deserved the same opportunities as native-born children.

Stephen Harper Touts Hard-Line Foreign Policy In Major Speech

OTTAWA - The leaders of the three main federal parties spent Day 1 of the unofficial year-long election campaign vying to portray themselves as champions of middle-class Canadians.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper touted his government's plans to cut taxes for Canadian families.

Creepy Wildrose attack ads set the tone as Alison Redford prepares to be sworn in as Alberta premier

Honeymoon? What honeymoon?

Alison Redford was elected leader of Alberta's governing Progressive Conservative Party in a vote announced in the wee hours of Sunday morning. She hasn't even been sworn in as premier and everyone is piling on and screeching like banshees.

Just a thought, but rank and file Albertans may want to give Redford a few days to get her transition under way in an orderly fashion, and to drop a couple of hints about what her policy plans may actually be, before we all light our hair on fire.

The National Citizens Coalition, a loony-right Toronto-based propaganda shop once led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, attacked the premier-designate for making an unholy alliance with unions in a "highly controversial backroom deal."

Horror Stories From Tough-Love Teen Homes

One day last November, a group of teenage girls dressed in long khaki skirts and modest blouses stepped onto the stage at an Independent Fundamental Baptist church in Maryland where Jeannie Marie (a military spouse who asked that her last name not be used) attended services with her family. The young women, visitors from a Missouri girls' home called New Beginnings Ministries, sang old-time hymns, recited Scripture, and gave tearful testimonies about their journeys out of lives of sin. Headmaster Bill McNamara spoke, too, depicting the home as a place where girls could get on track academically, restore broken relationships, and learn to walk with God.

Neil Macdonald: God and taxes, how America is governed

I've never quite figured out how evangelical Protestantism and extreme fiscal conservatism are entangled. But they are, at least here in the U.S.

Apparently, the God worshipped by the most fundamentalist of born-again Christians prefers small government. He does not approve of raising taxes, even on the rich. (Some might say especially on the rich.)

I had all this explained to me years ago, shortly after arriving in the States, by a prominent leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, one of the most powerful evangelical denominations in the country.

This preacher was more intent on explaining why abortion is murder and homosexual behaviour should be criminalized. But he took the time to explain how God's plan applied to government finances, too.

The fact that wealthy Americans pay much lower taxes than wealthy people in any other developed country is, apparently, God's wish.

America's own Taliban

Prior to 9/11, the Taliban government in Afghanistan did not register very much on American radar screens, with one notable exception: when it blew up two colossal images of the Buddha in Bamiyan province in early 2001. But destruction of treasured artifacts isn't just limited to the Taliban.

There's a right-wing politico-religious presence centred in the US, but with a global reach, engaging in similar practises, destroying religious and cultural artifacts as a key aspect of its ideology of "strategic level spiritual warfare" (SLSW).

Until recently a fringe evangelical movement, warned against as deviant, "spiritual warfare" is rapidly positioning itself within America's mainstream political right. It's well past time for political journalists to start covering what this movement is up to.

Trail of hatred leads to anti-Muslim views

Norway is burying its 77 dead after an unprecedented terrorist attack. The Norwegian Police Security Service said that the massacre was “unique,” and would not boost the levels of threat from extremist political groups.

But some experts say the rampage, although appearing to be the work of one unbalanced individual, is far from unlikely in Western countries that are experiencing an anti-Muslim climate of fear and loathing.

The Ringleader - How Grover Norquist keeps the conservative movement together.

For much of the twentieth century, Washington was a Democratic town. Presidents came and went, but on Capitol Hill, which is where the tax dollars get spent, liberals and moderates dominated the key committees and set the legislative agenda. Washington’s permanent establishment—the law firms, the lobbyists, the research institutes, the media—was also heavily Democratic. Even when Republicans took over, they tended to be consensus builders, like Howard Baker and Bob Dole, who rarely challenged the ruling ethos. Especially after Senator Barry Goldwater, of Arizona, made his disastrous bid for the Presidency, in 1964, conservative Republicans were regarded as oddballs. In 1974, when the American Conservative Union organized its first annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or cpac, it was able to muster just three co-sponsors: an organization called Young Americans for Freedom and the magazines National Review and Human Events. “The movement was so small that I liken it to when Marx and Lenin were in exile,” David Keene, the president of the American Conservative Union, said to me recently.

Republicans Reject the Middle—Again

This morning I had the pleasure of talking with Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist and fellow MSNBC contributor Clarence Page. Motivated by Monday night’s debate in New Hampshire, he and I discussed the current field of GOP candidates. I indicated my distress at hearing so many of them parrot the talking points of the Tea Party and my surprise that the new litmus test for being prolife required the candidates to reject a right to abortion even in the case of rape, incest and threat to the life of the woman. In response, Page reminded me of the 1964 Republican National Convention when Nelson Rockefeller was booed by Goldwater delegates. It was a useful reminder.

In 1964 the Republican Party was at war with itself and the convention highlighted the fronts of the battle. Rockefeller largely derailed his own opportunity for the nomination when he divorced his wife of three decades and married a much young woman. By 1964 standards this behavior violated the basic rules of ethical personal conduct expected of serious contenders for national office. But it was not his personal life that was booed by conservative convention delegates. They shouted at Rockefeller when he insisted on the need for “honest Republican liberalism that has kept this party abreast of human need” and warned that “the Republican Party is in real danger of subversion by a radical, well-finaced, highly disciplined majority.”

Republicans booed Rockefeller as the civil rights movement was marching toward greater equality for African-Americans. They booed Rockefeller as American women were challenging centuries of narrow, repressive social and economic practices. They booed Rockefeller as Americans rattled with fear over a Communist threat to American domestic security and international hegemony. They booed Rockefeller as the changing world evoked a heightened sense of vulnerability for those who had wielded power and privilege for so long. It is almost laughable that someone of the family legacy and monied heritage of Rockefeller could stand in as symbol of the changing world of 1964. But the very fact that he was interpreted as frighteningly left of the GOP center is an indication of how far right the party had moved. So in 1964 the GOP rejected Rockefeller Republicanism and embraced Goldwater extremism.

I couldn’t help but notice similar patterns of rejecting traditional conservatism in exchange for radical rightism in the GOP candidates on Monday night. They seemed intent on vaulting over most reasonable responses in a rush to position themselves as far to the right as the stage would allow.

The Republican extremism of 1964 was disastrous in the short term. Goldwater carried only six states and President Johnson secured the largest popular vote margin in modern presidential history. But I am not interested in comparing 2012 to 1964 to reassure Democrats that it is easy to beat extremists in the general election. Because while 1964 was a short-term loss, the conservative strategy has paid huge electoral dividends to Republican Party over the past fifty years.

Republicans secured their position as the national party of the South in 1964 and they have held it ever since. Recall that Nixon enthusiastically embraced Goldwater in 1964 and was shortly elected president himself. Nineteen sixty-four was also the conservative coming-out party for a young Ronald Reagan who was then elected governor of California two years later and went on to become the icon of the contemporary GOP. Interestingly though, the GOP rejection of Rockefeller ultimately sealed the fate of an ambitious, young moderate who could never again gain a significant following among Republicans: George Romney. It will be instructive to see if his son chooses to run to the right in order to secure the nomination his father could never obtain.

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Source: The Nation