Thursday THREATCON - 26 March 2015

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 alleged cooperation of Israeli intelligence with Republican Congressmen trying to undermine President Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Iran, our Threatcon Color Code is BLACK TREASON

Republicans are denying the Wall Street Journal’s story about their complicity in Israeli spying — and little wonder, because unlike Sen. Tom Cotton’s letter two weeks ago, this scandal could actually result in espionage charges if Obama wanted to pursue it
Here’s one measure of how far conservatism has fallen from its patriotic perch: by trying to make Bowe Bergdahl a Rorschach test of Obama, Republicans are encouraging future adversaries to kill their American POWs
Climate change-denying, Islamophobia-pandering Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Lalaland) is trying to undo the self-inflicted damage of signing up for an Obamacare policy by just lying about the law — especially the parts which deal with Congress itself. George Zornick says that Cruz’s fundamental and pervasive dishonesty is his single biggest political liability
67 year-old Michael Sibley was arrested last weekend and charged with leaving an explosive device in a Georgia public park. Confronted with evidence he had placed the backpack containing a copy of the Qur’an and a shirt with a foreign-sounding name, Sibley told investigators that he was trying to be a “patriot”
Pennsylvania police officer Lisa Mearkle has been charged with homicide for shooting 59 year-old David Kassick twice in the back when he was face-down and tasered
Walmart, Nordstrom, Safeway, and more of the nation’s largest employers are trying to make it harder than ever for injured employees to collect Worker’s Compensation. These cruel efforts have the biggest impact on the people who are hurt the most
A growing body of evidence contradicts conservative gospel: enlarging the welfare state actually increases entrepreneurial spirit
Good news: the Supreme Court has rejected Alabama’s 2010 gerrymandered redistricting plan for packing blacks and Democrats into political Bantustans
Bad news: the conservative SCOTUS majority appears hostile to the Obama administration’s mercury pollution rules because they consider the cost of implementation secondarily to the cost of poisoning the air and water
Florida Governor Rick Scott’s denials of his climate change denials are becoming less credible all the time. Days after a Department of Environmental Protection employee said he was ordered to get a mental health examination for using the words “climate change,” Florida’s disaster response chief refused to utter the words himself during a hearing:

https://youtu.be/BLVYjACDN1E

For months now — almost a year — I’ve tried to raise the alarm about ‘Religious Freedom Restoration Acts’ (RFRAs) that provide legal cover for bigotry. Indiana Republican Governor Mike Pence has just signed one of the worst RFRAs in America
There is no ‘law of capitalism’ which requires a business to pay employees as little as possible. It’s just an excuse for greed
Why do Americans hate paying their taxes? Because corporations pay so little. Here is a handy explainer of ten types of tax cuts and who they benefit
If Democrats are such fans of welfare spending, then why are Republican states more dependent on the federal government?
National fraternities are weighing whether to lobby Congress for help thwarting college rape investigations
The “Sodomite Suppression Act,” ballot initiative brainchild of gay-hating California attorney Matt McLaughlin, is being countered by an “Intolerant Jackass Act“
Asabin Saebsuang explains everything you need to know regarding that loony-tunes conspiracy theory about Obama supposedly trying to blow up Charleston with a nuclear bomb
A group of 4th grade students who tried to get their New Hampshire legislature to make the red-tailed hawk the state’s official raptor were instead treated to a Republican “joking” that the bird would make a better mascot for Planned Parenthood
Phil Robertson’s sick fantasy about dismembering an atheist family might be a little bit funny if Madalyn Murray O’Hair and her kids hadn’t disappeared in 1995
Your US RDA of outrage porn: Glenn Beck and The Blaze writer John Cardillo construct an elaborate chalkboard fantasy about George Soros and the Ferguson protests

Why is Peabody Energy paying Lawrence Tribe, Obama’s constitutional law professor, to help them oppose the Obama administration’s clean energy initiatives? Why is coal-lobbyist-in-chief Sen. Mitch McConnell lobbying states to opt out? Because the US coal industry has lost 76% of its value in the last five years and can’t survive without direct government intervention
Attorney Nessa Coppinger, who defends corporations accused of releasing toxic substances, is suing her neighbor for smoking in his own home
This is what regulatory capture looks like: SEC Examination Chief Andrew Bowden tells a room full of private equity execs that he wants his son to be one of them
The war on women continues: Arizona just passed a bill which prohibits women from buying insurance policies that cover abortion and requires doctors who administer medication abortions to offer an untested “reversal” procedure. At the behest of forced-birth activists, Kansas has also outlawed the safest, simplest second trimester abortion procedure
Author Stephen King has called out the absurd fictions of Maine’s ‘sovereign citizen’ Governor Paul LePage, who claimed the writer had left the state and stopped paying taxes
Self-proclaimed ‘sovereign citizen’ Ishaq Ibrahim has reportedly just been sentenced to 14-28 years in prison for bank robbery
Despite never having passed the bar, Anthony Williams of Florida calls himself a “private attorney general” and plans to indict a Miami-Dade judge in his sovereign citizen ‘common law grand jury’ for the crime of deciding against one of his “clients” in a foreclosure case
The latest right wing militia scam: claim you’re organizing volunteer forces to fight ISIS
Fox News anchor and serial liar Bill O’Reilly is resorting to bald-faced anti-Semitic tropes to whip up conspiracy theories about George Soros
The conservative Heritage Foundation is now defending ‘ex-gay therapy’