It’s Thursday Threatcon, your intelligence briefing on right wing activity. Below are the best reports, investigations, exposées, and debunkery of the wingnutosphere this week. Due to the USA’s World Cup match against Portugal on Sunday, your Threatcon Color-Code is SCARLET AND DARK GREEN.
- Jamie Tarabay of Al Jazeera America has published a three-part series on the three-way interrelationship of the oil industry, the gun lobby, and hunters. Published yesterday, part three is about hunters who are dissatisfied with the NRA; published Monday, part one is mandatory reading about the many links between the oil and gun lobbies
- At Salon, Paul Rosenburg published a great weekend essay about the history of the American Party, aka the “Know-Nothings,” who were the original tea party when the Republicans were just getting started. The GOP really isn’t the party of Lincoln anymore
- ‘Sovereign citizen’ Gary Allen Lewis was arrested for murder in Oregon last Thursday
- A California Highway Patrolman and a US Bureau of Land Management officer were injured in a shootout with ‘sovereign citizen‘ Brent Douglas Cole last weekend. At The Daily Banter, Chez Pazienza concludes: “what’s truly frightening is that there will almost certainly be more shootings like this one to come”
- A Chicago ‘sovereign citizen’ and “paper terrorist” was convicted Wednesday of slapping bogus billion-dollar liens against federal court officials. The Chicago Tribune reports that her ‘movement’ has gained tens of thousands of adherents in recent years — and is still growing
- Michael Smerconish has pronounced the Homeland Security Department’s report five years ago on right wing terrorism “vindicated“
- Dana Milbank attended a Heritage Foundation Benghazi panel on Monday afternoon and reported on some disturbing behavior exhibited towards Saba Ahmed after she questioned the panelists’ stereotyping of Muslims. Joan Walsh notes the irony of Saba’s attempt to fit in with conservatives; Media Matters has the video so you can judge for yourself; here is Chris Hayes last night with Milbank and Linda Sarsour:
- At Gawker, J.K. Trotter points out that the Heritage panel also touted some long-debunked and truly insane conspiracy theories about Huma Abedin
- At ThinkProgress, Bryce Covert offers evidence that contrary to conservative orthodoxy, most able-bodied poor Americans actually work very hard
- Peter Montgomery of Right Wing Watch takes a deep look at Dan and Farris Wilks, the billionaire brothers who spend their considerable fracking fortunes on extreme right wing politics. I’ve put their picture at the top of the post so you’ll recognize them in public. And yes, they hang out with the Koch boys
- The New York Times reports that Eric Cantor’s defeat by David Brat wiped out Boeing’s stock price gains so far this year. The rise of anticorporate populism has the Republican business wing so worried that last weekend, they raised $800,000 for Thad Cochran’s primary runoff race in Mississippi
- People For the American Way and Right Wing Watch have released their report on the burgeoning conservative echo chamber for Christian persecution narratives. Todd Starnes of Fox News comes in for special mention as a purveyor of these snake-oil stories, all of which turn out to be myths or fabrications
- Perhaps coincidentally, the anti-choice Susan B. Anthony list is suing Ohio for the right to lie in political ads
- Karoli debunks the latest Lois Lerner-related IRS nontroversy over deleted emails at Crooks and Liars
- A New York English teacher has sued the school district that fired him after becoming aware of his disturbing ideas about Sandy Hook, government mind control, and his shiny new rifle
- There seems to be a new trend in “good guys with guns” who shoot themselves in the penis