HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE

RIGHT WING: NOTHING BUT HATE

Right-wing philosophy is a cancer on this country. Right-wingers have impeded social progress at every turn. They tried to derail the New Deal and positive reforms such as Social Security, unemployment insurance, banking regulation, and a basic safety net for the majority of us. They fought tooth and nail against civil rights legislation. They have blocked attempts at regulating gun ownership and we see the carnage constantly from any nut getting easy access to a gun to kill lots and lots of people. They cling to a superstitious religious belief that should have gone the way of bleeding with leeches. In this column Tim Rutten looks at the wave of hate crimes committed by right-wing cretins The column is at www.latimes.com:

The United States' extreme right wing inhabits a shadow world, and the delusional nature of its core beliefs -- anti-Semitism, white supremacy and a rat's nest of economic and constitutional conspiracy theories -- makes tracing causality within its ranks a dicey proposition. Still, it's clear that something is stirring this peculiarly American cesspool in ways that haven't occurred since the mid-1990s, when an upsurge in activity among so-called militia groups culminated in the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the deadliest terrorist incident on American soil until 9/11.

Rumors that the new Obama administration secretly planned to seize people's firearms surged through the Internet, which nowadays links extremists like a kind of fevered nervous system, and fueled a run on gun stores that stock assault weapons. In April, incidents of violence began to crop up: Three Pittsburgh police officers were killed by a 23-year-old man who feared his guns were about to be seized. The alleged killer frequented white-supremacist websites and frequently railed to his friends about "Jewish control" of the banks and media. Shortly afterward, a Florida National Guard soldier shot two deputy sheriffs to death, allegedly because he was "severely disturbed" by Obama's election. He too was a frequent reader of far-right-wing websites.