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 disgraced anti-vax/Benghazi/hacking conspiracy nut Sharyl Attkisson’s new ‘investigative’ Sunday program on Sinclair News, our Threatcon Color Code is YELLOW JOURNALISM
- David Neiwert reports on the bizarre ‘patriot’ rebellion at Sugar Pine Mine in Oregon, where the putative land use movement that sprang up a year ago at Cliven Bundy’s ranch has morphed into a conspiracy theory-driven camping trip for Oath Keepers protecting a gold miner from regulation by the Bureau of Land Management
- Congressional Republicans are using the District of Columbia as a laboratory for the party’s new ‘religious freedom restoration’ agenda which has been so controversial in Indiana. This week, House committees have voted to reverse LGBT protections and give employers veto power over residents’ birth control and reproductive health care under the rubric of “religious liberty”
- Baton Rouge Metro Councilman John Delgado has called State Rep. Mike Johnson, the Republican state representative responsible for Louisiana’s new ‘religious freedom’ bill, a “despicable bigot of the highest order“
- By spending more on lobbying Congress than American citizens spend running it, corporations have more power than ever in Washington. So the next time you’re reading an article about the GOP power-struggle between its business wing and the religious right, remember that one of these things created the other
- Even though the Texas cattle industry is suffering from the effects of climate change, the Texas Senate recently voted to discontinue renewable energy programs
- The resignation of DEA head Michele Leonhart is a huge win for marijuana and hemp policy activists
- Billionaire fashion trends: single-donor ‘super PACs’ are hot, old-fashioned ‘bundlers’ are not
- The largest, most comprehensive study ever conducted finds zero link between vaccines and autism
- Did you know that 42% of Americans make less than $15 an hour? Joseph Stiglitz calls the American Dream “a myth” and prescribes breaking corporate monopoly power over wages
- According to conservative economic theology, minimum wage hikes ought to be crashing state and local economies. So why is the exact opposite happening?
- New York Times reporter Nick Confessore telling Judith Miller “your stories were wrong” deserves to be mashed up into a thousand YouTube variations:
https://youtu.be/r0DOoG2j9KM
- On the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, Timothy McVeigh’s anti-government beliefs are now mainstream Republican rhetoric and the Michigan Militia is still active
- Texas Republicans always cut funding for family planning services, but they have plenty of money for fake medical clinics giving bad advice to persuade women against abortion
- Current polling methods don’t accurately reflect American attitudes on abortion, and better questions reveal a way for freedom and choice advocates to better frame issues of access
- The return of ultrasound Republicans: Alabama legislators have a new ‘fetal heartbeat’ bill that would force pregnant women to undergo ultrasound testing prior to an abortion. Alabama is one of the three worst American states in which a child can be born, BTW
- Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam will sign bills requiring a 48-hour ‘waiting period’ before an abortion and requiring doctors to give patients state-mandated anti-abortion propaganda. Haslam was recently named America’s richest politician by Forbes
- Alabama’s budget debacle is entering a tragic austerity spiral: legislators want to cut $11 million from state parks, a measure that would kill hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity
- Rush Limbaugh lost another major station last week. As I’ve been telling you for three years, the free market is speaking to him
- Anti-transgender activists are trying to pass a ballot initiative that would turn private citizens into government restroom police
- Your US RDA of outrage porn: Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall, sponsor of a new ‘religious liberty’ bill, complains that opponents are discriminating against straight people
- Why does America have such awful passenger rail service? Because there’s no national constituency for better trains to oppose corporate interest
- Caught on videotape, infamous fascist police officer Bill “Robocop” Melendez has been charged with three felonies for assaulting a man and planting evidence on him
- A federal judge has issued a restraining order against Lear Corp. Federal safety regulators say the company has harassed and sued its workers to interfere in their investigation of reported violations at the Selma, Alabama, Renosol plant
- “Useful idiots:” the Koch brothers are scaling up their GOTV (get out the vote) efforts in 2016
- Having just been crowned the Koch brothers’ favorite for the 2016 GOP nomination (or maybe not?), Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker celebrated Earth Day this week by cutting dozens of jobs at the Department of Natural Resources
- Searchlight, a partner publication of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, and the Daily Mail got a reporter inside a secret gathering of Holocaust deniers held in London by the ‘Institute for Historical Review.’ Regular readers will remember that IHR seems to be under the control of Scientologists
- New Jersey Governor Chris Christie uses fuzzy math to pretend he’s a champion of state pensions
- Alabama’s anti-gay Ten Commandments champion, Chief Justice Roy Moore, spoke admiringly of the Supreme Court’s 1896 Plessy v Ferguson ‘separate but equal’ ruling last Saturday at an event where homophobic African American pastors presented him with an award named for Martin Luther King. As Rachel Maddow would say, “and that is a thing that happened”
- Former West Memphis, Ark., Police Chief Bob Paudert opens up about losing his son in a shootout with ‘sovereign citizen’ extremists five years ago
- Ultraconservative Catholic group Opus Dei is suing a Chilean LGBT group for buying a satirical “OpusGay” web domain
