Kris Kobach

Beck: Immigration Reform Advocates Practicing KKK-Style 'Domestic Terrorism'

Submitted by Miranda Blue on Tuesday, 6/18/2013 11:58 am

Whatever you think of the decision by Kansas immigration reform advocates to hold a peaceful protest outside of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s house this weekend, you could probably agree that there is a significant difference between the protesters – pictured here – and the Ku Klux Klan.

But not if you’re Glenn Beck. Beck was scheduled to interview Kobach on his program yesterday, but Kobach had to drop off the call due to technical difficulties. So Beck winged it, showing a video of the protest and asking, “What’s the difference between that and the Klan coming to Martin Luther King’s house?”

“This is not just domestic terrorism, this is civil rights stuff,” he added. “This isn’t America. This is old-style South kind of tactics.”

Responding to the protest yesterday, Kobach said the “mob” at his house is the “reason we have the Second Amendment” and worried that the protesters could have tried to break in.

UPDATE: Beck finally got on the phone with Kobach, who agreed with him about the demonstrators: “They’re just not wearing white cloaks, but this is exactly KKK type of intimidation."

Kobach: Immigration Advocates Like the KKK, 'Just Not Wearing White Cloaks'

Submitted by Miranda Blue on Tuesday, 6/18/2013 3:07 pm

Yesterday, Glenn Beck accused the immigration reform advocates who held a peaceful protest outside the home of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach of practicing “domestic terrorism” just like the Ku Klux Klan. Today, Kobach himself appeared on Beck’s radio show and agreed with this assessment. “They’re just not wearing white cloaks, but this is exactly KKK type of intimidation,” the Kobach said.

“The left is set up on revenge,” Beck responded, “and so they’re using the tactics of those who kept them down in the past that we all tried to defeat…So they’re just changing their hood or changing their language, but it is not changing who they really are or what they’re trying to do.”

Beck also compared the demonstrators to Greece’s Golden Dawn party, a neo-Nazi group with ties to anti-immigrant hate crimes.

Kobach previously threatened to use violence against the “mob” of protesters.

Kobach Tells 'Mob' that Protested at His House: 'There's a Reason We Have a 2nd Amendment'

Submitted by Miranda Blue on Monday, 6/17/2013 1:55 pm

Yesterday, a group of about 100 supporters of comprehensive immigration reform staged a protest at the house of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has been a driving force behind anti-immigrant laws around the country. By all accounts, the protest was peaceful: a short video of the event shows protesters carefully staying off the grass as they repeat the chants of a man with a bullhorn.

But Kobach, who was not at home at the time, tells Fox News' Todd Starnes, “I shudder to think what would have happened if one of those members of the mob had tried to break into the house.”

He added that he would have considered using a firearm against the protestors: “It’s important we recognize there’s a reason we have the Second Amendment. There are situations like this where you have a mob and you do need to be able to protect yourself.”

Starnes reports that Kobach told him  “a large number of the protesters were believed to be illegal aliens."

“I was just appalled,” Kobach told Fox News. “They have a right to protect at my office or at public places – that’s fine. But they don’t have a right to enter someone’s private property and engage in this kind of intimidation.”

“I have four little girls and they would have been terrified to see 200 protesters shouting at their daddy on megaphones on the front lawn,” he said.

The secretary of state said a large number of the protesters were believed to be illegal aliens. They can be seen on video chanting in Spanish, standing on Kobach’s porch, front yard and driveway and demanding that he come outside.

…
Kobach said he was especially troubled to learn that it took police at least 15 minutes to respond to his house.

“You have a mob of 200 people gathering on someone’s property and it takes the police 15 minutes to get there,” he said. “That doesn’t give you a whole lot of confidence either. I shudder to think what would have happened if one of those members of the mob had tried to break into the house.”

He also feared what would have happened had he been home with his wife and four young daughters.

“On a typical Saturday, my four girls would have been riding their bikes and coloring chalk in the driveway,” he said. “That’s where they play. If four buses pulled up and the mob started marching down upon them, they would have been absolutely terrified.”

The secretary of state is a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment – and he said the incident at his home is an example of why Americans should bear arms.

“If we had been in the home and not been armed, I would have felt very afraid – because it took the police 15 minutes to show up,” he said. “It’s important we recognize there’s a reason we have the Second Amendment. There are situations like this where you have a mob and you do need to be able to protect yourself.”

He said had they been home and the mob had gotten out of hand, his family would have been in “grave jeopardy.”

“The Second Amendment is the private property owner’s last resort,” he said.

Kobach said he’s asked local police and the county attorney to investigate the incident. He believes a number of laws were violated including terrorizing a public official.
 

Kansas' Kobach Pushes Plan that Would Disenfranchise Alaska Natives

Submitted by Miranda Blue on Wednesday, 6/5/2013 2:55 pm

Back in April, two Alaska House committees approved a bill that would require voters to show a photo ID at the polls – a particularly damaging measure in a state where many rural communities don’t even require photos on drivers’ licenses. Now, the Anchorage Daily News is reporting that there is a familiar face behind the measure. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the driving force behind voter suppression and anti-immigrant measures around the country, reportedly coordinated with Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell to push the bill in what looks like an effort to damage Democratic Sen. Mark Begich in his 2014 reelection bid. (Treadwell denies that he worked with Kobach on the bill, which he says he opposes.)

Alaska Natives say a photo ID rule would be a roadblock to voting in the Bush. A decline in turnout there, with its traditionally heavy Democratic vote, could affect the 2014 reelection hopes of U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat running in a Republican-leaning state. One of his potential rivals is Alaska's top election official, Republican Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell.

Treadwell says he doesn't support the voter ID bill, but Kobach says Treadwell was instrumental in getting him involved in promoting the Alaska legislation.

In an April statement to reporters that didn't mention Kobach or Kansas, Treadwell touted the cross-checking as having found 14 people suspected of "actually voting in both Alaska and another state" in 2012. Treadwell threatened to prosecute the voters if the allegations were confirmed.

Alaska elections director Gail Fenumiai recently said 12 of the 14 voters cited in Treadwell's April statement were wrongly identified as duplicate voters and actually voted only in Alaska.

…

Kobach told the Daily News it was he who suggested to Treadwell that Alaska get involved in the Kansas project. "I personally talked to Mead Treadwell, your lieutenant governor, and encouraged him to join, and he did so," Kobach said.

And his testimony on the photo ID bill, Kobach said, was the result of a conversation with Treadwell.

"I spoke to Mead about it at one of our national conferences -- he mentioned that you guys were considering a photo ID law," Kobach said. "I said I'd be happy to share some of the experiences we've had in Kansas."

Treadwell, who said he doesn't support the Alaska bill because of the difficulty for Bush residents to get photo identification, said he didn't recall talking to Kobach about it.

As the Daily News explains, a photo ID bill would be especially damaging to Alaska Natives living in rural communities where DMVs are hard to access and where many towns don’t even require photographs on drivers’ licenses:

Photo ID measures are controversial across the country. Advocates say they help prevent fraud. Opponents say they make it more difficult for particular groups of people to vote: the elderly, students and the poor who don't own cars. In Alaska, the situation is compounded by the difficulty of getting to a Division of Motor Vehicles office in a regional hub like Nome or Bethel from a small village. Alaska doesn't even require a photograph on a driver's license in dozens of Bush communities.

Democratic activists say photo ID bills have the effect of disenfranchising more Democratic voters than Republicans. In his annual address to the Alaska Legislature this year, Begich criticized the bill as making it more difficult for Alaska Natives and Hispanics -- two traditional Democratic groups -- to vote.

The sponsor of Alaska’s bill, who has acknowledged that he drafted the measure using materials from the corporate-funded conservative group ALEC, had odd words of consolation for those concerned about the suppressive impact of the bill: at least it wouldn’t be as bad as Iraq!

Rep. Bob Lynn, an Anchorage Republican who is prime sponsor of the voter ID bill, said he wasn't trying to disenfranchise anyone. He dismissed opponents as complainers who should be happy they don't face the kind of obstacles voters do in places like Iraq.

"Terrorists have threatened to kill anyone who voted, but they voted anyway, and then these voters put ink in their finger to prove they had voted -- evidence that could have gotten them killed. Now that's a hassle, to say the least. Needing a photo ID to vote in Alaska wouldn't even come close to that," Lynn said when his State Affairs Committee first heard the bill in February.
 

Kobach Seeks to Expand Own Power Over 'Election Fraud' Cases

Submitted by Miranda Blue on Monday, 5/6/2013 12:24 pm

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the driving force behind draconian anti-immigrant laws in Arizona and Alabama and a rising national figure on the Right, is close to a major victory on one of his other pet projects – gaining attention for the mythical problem of “election fraud.”

Kansas’ legislature is poised to grant Kobach’s office the power to prosecute election fraud cases that it identifies, a responsibility previously reserved for county and federal prosecutors. Kobach claims that prosecutors and the state attorney general’s office are neglecting these cases because of “a very full plate.”

But a look at even a few of the cases Kobach claims that prosecutors are neglecting tells a very different story. In February, Kobach told The Topeka Capital-Journal that he had referred eleven “slam dunk” cases to prosecutors, none of which had ended in convictions. But one of the prosecutors responsible for following up on those cases found that most were isolated incidents involving people who were just confused about the voting laws:

Johnson County District Attorney Stephen Howe took exception to some of Kobach's characterizations in his testimony on behalf of the Kansas County and District Attorneys Association. Howe said Kobach's bird’s-eye view of widespread voter fraud crumbles when investigated by those on the ground.

For instance, Howe said one double-voter his office investigated was an elderly man showing "the early stages of dementia." Howe's office notified the man's family rather than prosecute him.

Another alleged double voter was a developmentally disabled man.

“Are we supposed to prosecute that case?" Howe asked. "I chose not to.”

This fits with the pattern. In 2011, Kobach claimed that there had been 221 incidents of voter fraud in Kansas between 1997 and 2010. Yet just seven of these resulted in convictions.

Kobach now claims that he has identified at least 30 cases of illegal double voting in the 2012 election by finding people with the same name and birthdate who voted in two separate states. Such matching tactics have in the past have resulted not in legitimate voter fraud convictions, but in embarrassing errors and mass wrongful disenfranchisement.

Kobach’s issue with the state’s prosecutors seems to be not that they haven’t properly investigated voter fraud – but that they have failed to promote the conspiracy theory about widespread voter fraud that, when it becomes popular, benefits people like Kris Kobach and the policies they pursue.
 

Anti-Immigrant Leader Kris Kobach Levels Dishonest Attacks on Obama Immigration Directive

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 8/31/2012 3:25 pm

Kansas Secretary of State and SB 1070 architect Kris Kobach spoke to Janet Mefferd today about a new lawsuit contesting the recent executive order blocking deportation of some younger undocumented immigrants. According to the executive order, young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children can apply for “deferred action,” giving them protection from deportation, as long as they have no criminal background and either have served in the military or received a high school diploma or GED. Kobach told Mefferd that the “shocking” decision has no precedent.

However, this is not the first time prosecutorial discretion has been used in immigration cases. As the Immigration Policy Center notes, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services “exercised its prosecutorial discretion when it adopted a new policy establishing a procedure for surviving spouses and children of deceased U.S. citizens, who were no longer eligible to apply for permanent residence, to apply for deferred action.” Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion in Arizona v. United States (2012) also affirmed the right of the federal government to exercise such discretion:

“A principal feature of the removal system is the broad discretion exercised by immigration officials,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy, the author of the opinion. “Federal officials, as an initial matter, must decide whether it makes sense to pursue removal at all.”

“Discretion in the enforcement of immigration law em¬braces immediate human concerns. Unauthorized workers trying to support their families, for example, likely pose less danger than alien smugglers or aliens who com¬mit a serious crime,” Kennedy’s majority decision continued. “The equities of an individual case may turn on many factors, including whether the alien has children born in the United States, long ties to the community, or a record of distinguished military service.”

Later in the interview, Kobach suggested that undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. on no fault of their own should leave the U.S. and return to their country of origin once they become adults and even falsely claimed that immigrants who commit crimes in the U.S. are eligible for deferred action.

Kobach: This order by Napolitano orders the ICE agents to break the law, regardless of what federal law says, we’re telling you to let them go. So it’s a clear violation of federal law, also it’s a usurpation of the legislative power of Congress. The DREAM Act has been proposed in Congress 24 times in the last 11 years, it never passed and yet this administration thinks it can just circumvent Congress and that violates our constitutional separation of powers.

Mefferd: Boy, because one of the things you state in the lawsuit is the directive commands ICE officers to violate their oaths to uphold and support federal law. In other words, Obama by issuing this executive order somehow thinks he can just make people do things but these ICE agents feel, actually it’s not just a feeling it’s actually what the truth is, they have an obligation to uphold federal law and he’s undermining it.

Kobach: That’s absolutely right. I think we have to just step back here and think how shocking this is. Prior to the Obama administration, if you asked me ‘could you give me an example of where a president has ordered federal law enforcement agents either to break the law or to look the other way when the law is being broken’ I would say no, I don’t think I can give you examples.

…

Kobach: Under our laws and under the laws of most countries in the world once you hit the age of 18 you can no longer blame your parents for your situation. So if you are in this country 13 years after you turned 18, you’ve been illegal all that time and you’ve been responsible for your own behavior. To say that you are somehow inculpable or just a victim of circumstance is just ridiculous. These cases are not you know college valedictorians and top of their class, these are people of all different stripes who are committing crimes some very serious crimes, some not committing crimes, but the bottom line is they are in the country illegally as adults and the President is trying to claim that they somehow have a moral right or a legal right to stay and they do not.

6 Right-Wing Zealots and the Crazy Ideas Behind the Most Outrageous Republican Platform Ever

Submitted by Peter Montgomery on Tuesday, 8/28/2012 9:30 am

Note: this story is cross-posted at AlterNet.

The official 2012 Republican Party platform is a far-right fever dream, a compilation of pouting, posturing, and policies to meet just about every demand from the overlapping Religious Right, Tea Party, corporate, and neo-conservative wings of the GOP.  If moderates have any influence in today’s Republican Party, you wouldn’t know it by reading the platform.  Efforts by a few delegates to insert language favoring civil unions, comprehensive sex education, and voting rights for the District of Columbia, for example, were all shot down.  Making the rounds of right-wing pre-convention events on Sunday, Rep. Michele Bachmann gushed about the platform’s right-wing tilt, telling fired-up Tea Partiers that “the Tea Party has been all over that platform.”

Given the Republican Party’s hard lurch to the right, which intensified after the election of Barack Obama, the “most conservative ever” platform is not terribly surprising. But it still didn’t just happen on its own.  Here are some of the people we can thank on the domestic policy front.
 
1. Bob McDonnell.   As platform committee chair, McDonnell made it clear he was not in the mood for any amendments to the draft language calling for a “Human Life Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution and legal recognition that the “unborn” are covered by the Fourteenth Amendment – “personhood” by another name.  McDonnell is in many ways the ideal right-wing governor: he ran as a fiscal conservative and governs like the Religious Right activist he has been since he laid out his own political platform in the guise of a master’s thesis at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. 
 
His thesis argued that feminists and working women were detrimental to the family, and that public policy should favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals, or fornicators.”  When running for governor, McDonnell disavowed his thesis, but as a state legislator he pushed hard to turn those positions into policy.  As the Washington Post noted, “During his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper, including abortion restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional family. In 2001, he voted against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women.”  As governor, McDonnell signed the kind of mandatory ultrasound law that is praised in this year’s platform.  When his name was floated as a potential V.P. pick, Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood decried his “deeply troubling record on women’s health.”
 
2 Tony Perkins.  Perkins heads the Family Research Council, whose Values Voter Summit is the Religious Right’s most important annual conference, at which movement activists rub shoulders with Republican officials and candidates.  Perkins bragged in an email to his supporters how much influence he and his friend David Barton (see below) had on the platform.  Perkins was an active member of the platform committee, proposing language to oppose school-based health clinics that provide referrals for contraception or abortion, and arguing for the strongest possible anti-marriage equality language.  Perkins also introduced an amendment to the platform calling on the District of Columbia government to loosen its gun laws, which Perkins says still do not comply with recent Supreme Court rulings.
 
The media tends to treat Perkins, a telegenic former state legislator, as a reasonable voice of the Religious Right, but his record and his group’s positions prove otherwise.  Perkins has been aggressively exploiting the recent shooting at FRC headquarters to divert attention from the group’s extremism by claiming that the Southern Poverty Law Center was irresponsible in calling FRC a hate group.  Unfortunately for Perkins, the group’s record of promoting hatred toward LGBT people is well documented.  Perkins has even complained that the press and President Obama were being too hard on Uganda’s infamous “kill the gays” bill, which he described as an attempt to “uphold moral conduct.” It’s worth remembering that Perkins ran a 1996 campaign for Louisiana Senate candidate Woody Jenkins that paid $82,600 to David Duke for the Klan leader’s mailing list; the campaign was fined by the FEC for trying to cover it up.
 
3. David Barton.  Texas Republican activist and disgraced Christian-nation “historian” Barton has had a tough year, but Tampa has been good to him.  He was perhaps the most vocal member of the platform committee, and was a featured speaker at Sunday’s pre-convention “prayer rally.” During the platform committee’s final deliberations, Barton couldn’t seem to hear his own voice often enough.  He was the know-it-all nitpicker, piping up with various language changes, such as deleting a reference to the family as the “school of democracy” because families are not democracies.  He thought it was too passive to call Obamacare an “erosion of” the Constitution and thought it should be changed to an “attack on” the founding document.  He called for stronger anti-public education language and asserted that large school districts employ one administrator for every teacher.  He backed anti-abortion language, tossing out the claim that 127 medical studies over five decades say that abortion hurts women.  Progressives have been documenting Barton’s lies for years, but more recently conservative evangelical scholars have also been hammering  his claims about American history.  The critical chorus got so loud that Christian publishing powerhouse Thomas Nelson pulled Barton’s most recent book – which, ironically, purports to correct “lies” about Thomas Jefferson – from the shelves.  Of course, Barton has had plenty of practice at this sort of thing, from producing bogusdocumentaries designed to turn African Americans against the Democratic Party to pushing his religious and political ideology into Texas textbooks. Barton’s right-wing friends like Glenn Beck have rallied around him. And nothing seems to tarnish Barton with the GOP allies for whom he has proven politically useful over the years. 
 
4. Kris Kobach.  Kris Kobach wants to be your president one day; until now, he has gotten as far as Kansas Secretary of State.  He may be best known as the brains behind Arizona’s “show me your papers” law, and he successfully pushed for anti-immigrant language in the platform, including a call for the federal government to deny funds to universities that allow illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition – a plank that puts Kobach and the platform at odds with Kansas law.  Immigration is not Kobach’s only issue. He is an energizing force behind the Republican Party’s massive push for voter suppression laws around the country, and he led the effort to get language inserted into the platform calling on states to pass laws requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration.  He also pushed language aimed at the supposed threat to the Constitution and laws of the US from “Sharia law”; getting this language into the platform puts the GOP in position of endorsing a ludicrous far-right conspiracy theory.  Kobach hopes that will give activists a tool for pressuring more states to pass their own anti-Sharia laws.  In the platform committee, he backed Perkins’ efforts to maintain the strongest language against marriage equality.  Even an amendment to the marriage section saying that everyone should be treated “equally under the law” as long as they are not hurting anyone else, was shot down by Kobach.  Kobach also claims he won support for a provision to oppose any effort to limit how many bullets can go into a gun’s magazine.
 
5. James Bopp.  James Bopp is a Republican lawyer and delegate from Indiana whose client list is a Who’s Who of right-wing organizations, including National Right to Life and the National Organization for Marriage, which he has represented in its efforts to keep political donors secret.  As legal advisor to Citizens United, Bopp has led legal attacks on campaign finance laws and played a huge role in bringing us the world of unlimited right-wing cash flooding our elections.  Bopp chaired this year’s platform subcommittee on “restoring constitutional government,” which helps explain its strong anti-campaign finance reform language. 
 
Bopp is also an annoyingly petty partisan, having introduced a resolution in the Republican National Committee in 2009 urging the Democratic Party to change its name to the “Democrat Socialist Party.”  In this year’s platform committee, Bopp successfully pushed for the removal of language suggesting that residents of the District of Columbia might deserve some representation in Congress short of statehood.  His sneering comments, and his gloating fist-pump when the committee approved his resolution, have not won him any friends among DC residents – not that he cares.  He also spoke out against a young delegate’s proposal that the party recognize civil unions, which Bopp denounced as “counterfeit marriage.”  In spite of all these efforts, Bopp has been at the forefront of Romney campaign platform spin, arguing in the media that the platform language on abortion is not really a “no-exceptions” ban, in spite of its call for a Human Life Amendment and laws giving Fourteenth Amendment protections to the “unborn.” 
 
6. Dick Armey.  Former Republican insider Dick Armey now runs FreedomWorks, the Koch-backed, corporate-funded, Murdoch-promoted Tea Party astroturfing group – or, in their words, a “grassroots service center.” Armey has been a major force behind this year’s victories of Tea Party Senate challengers like Ted Cruz in Texas and Richard Mourdock in Indiana, both of whom knocked off “establishment” candidates – FreedomWorks also backed Rand Paul in Kentucky and Mike Lee in Utah in 2010.  As Alternet’s Adele Stan has reported, FreedomWorks’s goal is to build a cadre of far-right senators to create a “power center around Jim DeMint,” the Senate’s reigning Tea Party-Religious Right hero. 
 
To put Armey’s stamp on the platform, FreedomWorks created a “Freedom Platform” project, which enlisted Tea Party leaders to come up with proposed platform planks and encouraged activists to vote for them online. Then FreedomWorks pushed the party to include these planks in the official platform:
●      Repeal Obamacare; Pursue Patient-Centered Care
●      Stop the Tax Hikes
●      Reverse Obama’s Spending Increases
●      Scrap the Code; Replace It with a Flat Tax
●      Pass a Balanced Budget Amendment
●      Reject Cap and Trade
●      Rein in the EPA
●      Unleash America’s Vast Energy Potential
●      Eliminate the Department of Education
●      Reduce the Bloated Federal Workforce
●      Curtail Excessive Federal Regulation
●      Audit the Fed
 
An Ohio Tea Party Group, The Ohio Liberty Coalition, celebrated that 10 of 12 made it to the draft – everything but the flat tax and eliminating the Department of Education.  But FreedomWorks gave itself a more generous score, arguing for an 11.5 out of 12.  FreedomWorks vice president Dean Clancy said that the platform’s call for a “flatter” tax “opens the door to a Flat Tax” and said that they considered the education section of the platform a “partial victory” because it includes “a very strong endorsement of school choice, including vouchers.”
 
Honorable mention: Mitt Romney.  This is his year, his party, and his platform.  The entire Republican primary was essentially an exercise in Romney moving to the right to try to overcome resistance to his nomination from activists who distrusted his ideological authenticity.   The last thing the Romney campaign wanted was a fight with the base, like the one that happened in San Diego in 1996, when Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition delighted in publicly humiliating nominee Robert Dole over   his suggestion that the GOP might temper its anti-abortion stance.  Romney signaled his intention to avoid a similar conflict when he named Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell to chair the platform committee. 
 
Keeping Everybody Happy
 
The new GOP platform reflects Romney’s desire to placate every aspect of the party’s base.  It also demonstrates both the continuingpower of the Religious Right within the GOP, as well as ongoing efforts to erase any distinctions between social conservatives and anti-government zealots, as demonstrated by Ralph Reed welcoming Grover Norquist to his Faith and Freedom coalition leadership luncheon on Sunday.

Kris Kobach Says the GOP will Inspire Laws Targeting the Imaginary Sharia Threat Nationwide

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 8/24/2012 11:15 am

Kansas Secretary of State and on-and-off Mitt Romney adviser Kris Kobach yesterday appeared on Secure Freedom Radio, where actor and former Congressman Fred Grandy filled in for Frank Gaffney to discuss the Republican Party Platform Committee’s adoption of an anti-Sharia plank. Kobach cited a new Kansas law combating the fictional and manufactured threat of Sharia as a reason the Republican Party Platform Committee endorsed his anti-Sharia proposal, telling Grandy that the “unequivocal intent” of the committee’s decision was to encourage other states to “take a firm stand against Sharia law.” He later said that politicians across the country will point to the national party platform and say, ‘hey look, this is part of our national platform, this is not some unheard of or imaginary threat, this is part of the national Republican Party platform.’ Unfortunately for Kobach, just because the GOP embraced anti-Sharia conspiracies in its platform, that doesn’t make the threat of “creeping Sharia” any less imaginary.

Grandy: Is this a way of saying through the Republican Party organs that perhaps these kinds of Kansas-like provisions should be introduced at the state level around the country?

Kobach: Absolutely, that is the unequivocal intent and I don’t think anyone reading out platform cold come to any other conclusion. We’d like to see all of the states take a firm stand against Sharia law being used in their courts.

Grandy: I would have to say that particularly for those states where you have Republican dominated legislatures that have been somewhat reluctant to even consider this, or as in the case of Kansas had some pushback from some different minded Republicans, this is a terribly encouraging step. Because if the Republican Party nationally can say ‘no foreign laws in foreign courts’ particularly at the state level, because the point you make about it obviously being a threat from the top-down with the U.S. Supreme Court, but we also have to be mindful of the threat bottom-up at the state level, is something that I think enhances those of us that are trying to advance this initiative around the country in legislatures that up to this point have not been receptive.

Kobach: I hope so and I think it will allow state legislators who are trying to move similar legislation like Kansas’s and other states, they can point to the national party platform and say, ‘hey look, this is part of our national platform, this is not some unheard of or imaginary threat, this is part of the national Republican Party platform,’ and hopefully that will help assuage concerns that some of the more wobbly Republicans might have.

Two Miami-Area Congressmen to Appear with White Nationalist at CPAC

Submitted by Josh Glasstetter on Friday, 2/10/2012 5:16 pm

There’s already been substantial coverage of yesterday’s CPAC panel on multiculturalism featuring not one, but two, prominent white nationalists – Peter Brimelow and Bob Vandervoort. That may have just been the warm-up act for tomorrow morning.

Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart and David Rivera, both Republicans from the Miami metro area, are scheduled to appear on stage at CPAC with Vandervoort on an immigration panel entitled “High Fences, Wide Gates: States vs. the Feds, the Rule of Law & American Identity”:
 
Vandeervoort is currently the head of ProEnglish, which supports making English the official language of the US, but previously he was the leader of the white nationalist group Chicagoland Friends of the American Renaissance. As the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights has reported:
Vandervoort was at the center of white nationalist activity during his time in Illinois. While he was in charge, Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance often held joint meetings with the local chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens. The group held events featuring numerous white nationalist figures. Vandervoort also made appearances at white nationalist events outside Illinois, for instance participating in the 2009 Preserving Western Civilization Conference.
 
Started as a modest newsletter in 1990, American Renaissance has grown into an important vehicle for white nationalist ideas. American Renaissance first described itself as a "literate, undeceived journal of race, immigration and the decline of civility." It claimed that "White people" had lost their voice and that the United States was in danger of losing its "national and cultural core."
American Renaissance founder Jared Taylor wrote in the magazine that “the greatest threat to whites today comes from immigration.” He continued: “Racial preferences, guilt-mongering, anti-Western education, even anti-white violence are manageable problems compared to a process that is displacing whites and reducing them to a minority. With a change in thinking at the right levels, anti-white policies and double standards could be done away with practically overnight, but that would still leave us with nearly 100 million non-whites living in the country.”
 
Vandervoort’s extremism hasn’t gone unnoticed by conservatives who don’t share his bigoted ideology, including fellow panelist Alex Nowrasteh, who suggested today that Vandervoort is a racist:
The conservative Daily Caller also noted the explicit white nationalism of American Renaissance and put the conference organizers on the defensive:
The American Conservative Union, CPAC’s organizer, is keeping its distance.
 
“This panel was not organized by the ACU,” CPAC spokeswoman Kristy Campbell told The Daily Caller, ”and specific questions on the event, content or speakers should be directed to the sponsoring organization.”
But let’s recall that the American Conservative Union was fully in control when it came to GOProud, the conservative gay rights group that it banned from CPAC this year. Evidently, they can keep gay groups out but are powerless when it comes to white nationalists.
 
Which brings us back to tomorrow’s panel featuring Vandervoort, two Republican members of Congress, and Kris Kobach, Secretary of State of Kansas. Do Reps. Diaz-Balart and Rivera and Secretary Kobach really think it’s appropriate to appear on stage with a white nationalist? Will they denounce white nationalism and say it has no place within the GOP and conservative movement?
 
Tune in tomorrow morning to find out.

 

 

Right Wing Round-Up

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 1/27/2011 6:51 pm

Right Wing Round-Up

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 1/27/2011 6:51 pm

Right Wing Leftovers

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 9/9/2010 5:36 pm
  • International Burn a Koran Day has been canceled.

  • Which makes the trip by Faith and Action and the Christian Defense Coalition to Florida rather moot now, doesn't it?

  • Bryan Fischer continues to demonstrate just what a tremendous asset he is to the American Family Association.

  • Rick Scarborough has joined the line-up at WorldNetDaily's Take Back America Conference.

  • Rep. Steve King of Iowa, Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, author John R. Lott, and Kris Kobach will speak at the annual Eagle Forum Leadership Conference this weekend.

  • The Christian Coalition sure is web savvy.

  • The Family Research Council wants pharmacists to refuse to stock the new emergency contraceptive pill, ella.

  • Finally, it looks like Mike Huckabee's daytime TV program did not fare too well: "Needless to say, there is no reason to believe The Huckabee Show will return at a later time."

Right Wing Round-Up

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Monday, 7/13/2009 5:42 pm
  • Media Matters catches Rush Limbaugh declaring that Sotomayor's "wise latina" remarks are "much worse" than George Allen's "macaca" comment.

  • Is Kansas Secretary of State candidate Kris Kobach a birther?

  • Get to know Audra Shay, the new Chairman of the Young Republicans.

  • Pat Buchanan suggests that Todd Palin ought to drown Levi Johnston.

  • Jed Lewison points out the Gov. Mark Sanford might lose his top-secret security status due to the fact that relationships with foreigners must be revealed. Needless to say, he did not reveal his.

  • On a related note, Rachel Maddow continues her reporting on the secretive house on C Street.

  • Finally, Pam Spaulding notes that The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is seeking to remove the president of its Los Angeles chapter due to his support for marriage equality.

Alabama County Gives Money to Far-Right Group

Submitted by Anonymous on Thursday, 1/10/2008 7:19 pm

The government of Jefferson County, Alabama is making some sharp budget cuts to deal with a $30 million shortfall, but commissioners have scrounged up resources for at least one new priority: subsidizing a far-right activist group:

The Jefferson County Commission voted Tuesday to spend $15,000 to help a conservative group host a forum next month on global warming, immigration, education policy and other politically charged topics.

Eagle Forum of Alabama is part of the national Eagle Forum, an organization founded by Phyllis Schlafly, a longtime conservative political activist.

According to county commission president Bettye Fine Collins, the money is to help the Eagle Forum “work with the state school board and work with the local school system.” The Eagle Forum’s “leadership conference,” however, hardly sounds like an after-school program:

Eagle Forum of Alabama will hold its Twenty-Seventh Annual Leadership Conference on February 22-23, 2008 at the Birmingham Marriott on Highway 280. This years speakers include: Gary Palmer of the Alabama Policy Institute, Kris Kobach of the University of Missouri, Kansas City School of Law K.C. McAlpin of ProEnglish, Phyllis Schlafly and many more! We will be covering a variety of topics including: "Press One for English"; "What States Are Doing About Illegal Immigration"; and "What America Needs From Its Next President."

Collins had participated in an Eagle Forum event in the past, and another commissioner received an award from the group for his “leadership in working for God, Family, and Country.”

Twenty-two years ago, PFAW urged an investigation when the Eagle Forum was awarded a $600,000 grant from the Reagan administration Justice Department to counteract "the feminist agenda" on the issue of domestic violence.

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Kris Kobach Top Posts

Beck: Immigration Reform Advocates Practicing KKK-Style 'Domestic Terrorism'
Whatever you think of the decision by Kansas immigration reform advocates to hold a peaceful protest outside of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s house this weekend, you could probably agree that there is a significant difference between the protesters – pictured here – and the Ku Klux Klan. But not if you’re Glenn Beck. Beck was scheduled to interview Kobach on his program yesterday, but Kobach had to drop off the call due to technical difficulties. So Beck winged it, showing a video of the protest and asking, “What’s the difference between that and... MORE >

Kris Kobach Posts Archive

Kobach: Immigration Advocates Like the KKK, 'Just Not Wearing White Cloaks'
SUBMITTED BY: Miranda Blue, Tuesday 06/18/2013, 3:07pm
Yesterday, Glenn Beck accused the immigration reform advocates who held a peaceful protest outside the home of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach of practicing “domestic terrorism” just like the Ku Klux Klan. Today, Kobach himself appeared on Beck’s radio show and agreed with this assessment. “They’re just not wearing white cloaks, but this is exactly KKK type of intimidation,” the Kobach said. “The left is set up on revenge,” Beck responded, “and so they’re using the tactics of those who kept them down in the past that we all... MORE >
Kobach Tells 'Mob' that Protested at His House: 'There's a Reason We Have a 2nd Amendment'
SUBMITTED BY: Miranda Blue, Monday 06/17/2013, 1:55pm
Yesterday, a group of about 100 supporters of comprehensive immigration reform staged a protest at the house of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has been a driving force behind anti-immigrant laws around the country. By all accounts, the protest was peaceful: a short video of the event shows protesters carefully staying off the grass as they repeat the chants of a man with a bullhorn. But Kobach, who was not at home at the time, tells Fox News' Todd Starnes, “I shudder to think what would have happened if one of those members of the mob had tried to break into the house... MORE >
Kansas' Kobach Pushes Plan that Would Disenfranchise Alaska Natives
SUBMITTED BY: Miranda Blue, Wednesday 06/05/2013, 2:55pm
Back in April, two Alaska House committees approved a bill that would require voters to show a photo ID at the polls – a particularly damaging measure in a state where many rural communities don’t even require photos on drivers’ licenses. Now, the Anchorage Daily News is reporting that there is a familiar face behind the measure. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the driving force behind voter suppression and anti-immigrant measures around the country, reportedly coordinated with Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell to push the bill in what looks like an effort to damage Democratic... MORE >
Kobach Seeks to Expand Own Power Over 'Election Fraud' Cases
SUBMITTED BY: Miranda Blue, Monday 05/06/2013, 12:24pm
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the driving force behind draconian anti-immigrant laws in Arizona and Alabama and a rising national figure on the Right, is close to a major victory on one of his other pet projects – gaining attention for the mythical problem of “election fraud.” Kansas’ legislature is poised to grant Kobach’s office the power to prosecute election fraud cases that it identifies, a responsibility previously reserved for county and federal prosecutors. Kobach claims that prosecutors and the state attorney general’s office are... MORE >
Anti-Immigrant Leader Kris Kobach Levels Dishonest Attacks on Obama Immigration Directive
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Friday 08/31/2012, 3:25pm
Kansas Secretary of State and SB 1070 architect Kris Kobach spoke to Janet Mefferd today about a new lawsuit contesting the recent executive order blocking deportation of some younger undocumented immigrants. According to the executive order, young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children can apply for “deferred action,” giving them protection from deportation, as long as they have no criminal background and either have served in the military or received a high school diploma or GED. Kobach told Mefferd that the “shocking” decision has no... MORE >
6 Right-Wing Zealots and the Crazy Ideas Behind the Most Outrageous Republican Platform Ever
SUBMITTED BY: Peter Montgomery, Tuesday 08/28/2012, 9:30am
Note: this story is cross-posted at AlterNet. The official 2012 Republican Party platform is a far-right fever dream, a compilation of pouting, posturing, and policies to meet just about every demand from the overlapping Religious Right, Tea Party, corporate, and neo-conservative wings of the GOP.  If moderates have any influence in today’s Republican Party, you wouldn’t know it by reading the platform.  Efforts by a few delegates to insert language favoring civil unions, comprehensive sex education, and voting rights for the District of Columbia, for example, were all... MORE >
Kris Kobach Says the GOP will Inspire Laws Targeting the Imaginary Sharia Threat Nationwide
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Friday 08/24/2012, 11:15am
Kansas Secretary of State and on-and-off Mitt Romney adviser Kris Kobach yesterday appeared on Secure Freedom Radio, where actor and former Congressman Fred Grandy filled in for Frank Gaffney to discuss the Republican Party Platform Committee’s adoption of an anti-Sharia plank. Kobach cited a new Kansas law combating the fictional and manufactured threat of Sharia as a reason the Republican Party Platform Committee endorsed his anti-Sharia proposal, telling Grandy that the “unequivocal intent” of the committee’s decision was to encourage other states to “take a... MORE >
Two Miami-Area Congressmen to Appear with White Nationalist at CPAC
SUBMITTED BY: Josh Glasstetter, Friday 02/10/2012, 5:16pm
There’s already been substantial coverage of yesterday’s CPAC panel on multiculturalism featuring not one, but two, prominent white nationalists – Peter Brimelow and Bob Vandervoort. That may have just been the warm-up act for tomorrow morning. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart and David Rivera, both Republicans from the Miami metro area, are scheduled to appear on stage at CPAC with Vandervoort on an immigration panel entitled “High Fences, Wide Gates: States vs. the Feds, the Rule of Law & American Identity”:   Vandeervoort is currently the head of ProEnglish,... MORE >