Democratic Party nominee Scott McAdams announced today that his campaign has raised over a million dollars so far, in his quest to pull off a surprising victory against two candidates who are entering stages of terminal infighting.

The discovery of another “secret prison” in Baghdad is alarming. There are fears that this one is linked to the Interior Ministry and that the campaign against former armed forces members is re-starting.

It’s pretty hard to top reality these days.

As an avowed Dirty Freaking Hippy I am often stunned by the level of vitriol on the Right. It is not that you can not find some folks on the political Left that are, well, on the fringe. You can on almost any political blog you look at and more if you really go digging in the backwaters of the internet. The big difference is the lefties you will find while very angry and vocal are not talking about violence. This is not the case on the political Right.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

As much as it might pain some in the Republican party, the reality is that most violent rhetoric and action comes from people who agree with them. This is not an opinion, it is a fact based on the information from groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Yesterday the SPLC released its annual report on the number of hate and extremist groups in the United States. The scariest number is the 244% increase in “Patriot” groups in a single year. These groups have surged from 42 in 2008 to 147 in 2009. You read that right, in the first year of President Obama’s presidency; groups that consider it patriotic to talk about violent action against the government have exploded.

The main area of growth is militia groups. We have seen what the growth of militias can do back in the Clinton administration, with their infamous crowning achievement of the Oklahoma City bombings. Even though we all remember that attack, during the 1990’s militia and hate groups were responsible for many other smaller scale attacks, including the bombing of the Atlanta Olympics.

Since President Obama was inaugurated, rightwing extremists have killed six police officers. Last year the SPLC was lambasted by the Republicans for their report, The Second Wave; Return of the Militias, but they seem to have been right on the money with their predictions.

What is particularly troubling this time around are two things, first off the level of on air support the central ideas of these groups have in commentators like Glenn Beck, who routinely spouts insane conspiracy theories. The last time we saw a surge of these self described “patriot” groups there was very little main stream acceptance of their ideas or support for them. Now we have the Fox News channel as the clearing house for such ideas as FEMA interment camps.

Heavily armed militias are trying to increase the very same kinds of turmoil that charitable groups are striving to remedy. They are doing so in order to gain control of four main minerals: tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold that garner an estimated $180 million in revenues each year.

The town hall protesters are a symptom of something very dangerous of a long tradition of extreme right wing American militancy that, should it be allowed to once again flourish unchecked, will make the misdeeds of Timothy McVeigh pale into insignificance