No Trial Date - But New Judge Possible

For those of you wondering...

Bill White has asked for a new judge. The ruling will take place on April 2nd but no trial date has been set.

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Okay - Weigh In on the Latest

This controversial proposal has outraged a number of people. Where did all of this get started?

TO ORIGINAL SOURCE

Pelosi: Administration Will Not Force Veterans to Use Private Insurance to Pay for Treatment of Combat-Related Injuries
1 hr 24 mins ago

To: POLITICAL EDITORS


Contact: Brendan Daly, Nadeam Elshami, or Drew Hammill, all of the Office of the Speaker of the House, +1-202-226-7616


WASHINGTON, March 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced this afternoon that the Obama Administration would not proceed with a proposal that could have forced veterans to use their private insurance to pay for the treatment of combat-related injuries.


Pelosi made the announcement at a meeting she and House Democrats hosted this afternoon in the Capitol with leaders of veterans' service organizations, who greeted the news with a standing ovation. Below are the Speaker's remarks.


"Good afternoon and thank you all very much for coming. Thank you for your leadership, for your service to our country, for your generosity of spirit to America's heroes, for helping us make better policy to honor the service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform, both when they are in active duty and when they come home. As you know, in the military, the expression is: 'On the battlefield, we leave no soldier behind.' And when they come home, working with you, we will leave no veteran behind.


"Particular to today's meeting and a subject of some conversation, I'm pleased to announce that we have some good news. Over the past several days, President Obama has listened to the genuine concerns expressed by veterans' leaders and veterans' service organizations regarding the option of billing service connected to veterans' insurance companies.


"Based on the respect that President Obama has for our nation's veterans and the principled concerns expressed by veterans' leaders, the President has made the decision that the combat-wounded veterans should not be billed through their insurance policies for combat-related injuries. [Applause.]


"I want to thank all of you, our friends came to me from the American Legion and many of you expressed your views on this subject. You had a great champion, of course, in Chet Edwards, who is Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on veterans; the Chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, Bob Filner; the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Skelton, who is here; and the man who writes the budget, and he was never going to put this in the budget, I know, John Spratt.


"I want to thank them and you for making this important change. But it wasn't just the Chairmen inside the Congress, it was our Members as well. Mr. Brad Ellsworth is here, John Hall, Tim Walz, Jim Marshall, Glenn Nye, Vic Snyder; they and so many other Members, Gene Taylor. They and many members of the Armed Services and Veterans' Affairs Committees and Mr. Edwards, Appropriations Committee on Veterans Issues worked hard to make this clear so that this issue is now behind us.


"We have important work to do. Because of you, we have been able to have the biggest increases in veterans' benefits in the history of the VA. We did that a couple years ago as soon as we took the majority. And last year, we even did one better and now, working together under the leadership of President Obama, in the budget we have even more dramatic increases to meet the needs of America's heroes.


"So thank you all for the role that you are playing in this, and we look forward to this discussion today. Thank you all very much for joining us."


SOURCE Office of the Speaker of the House

SHEETS, POINTY HATS, AND AN INSANITY PLEA

PHOTO AND INITIAL REPORT FOUND HERE

This is rich...

Last November 43-year-old Cynthia Lynch went to Louisiana to join the Klan. Apparently, after a clandestine meeting in the bayou, she didn't like what she saw, felt uncomfortable, or simply changed her mind. Of course, this begs the question - "What the hell was she thinking in the first place." Well...they shot her - killed her and left her body. Now one of the defendants in the case is pleading "Not guilty by reason of insanity."

One can only wonder if the defense might not be able to make the case. After all, no sane person joins a group that wears sheets and pointy hats, burns crosses, and calls themselves a "Christian organization."


TO ORIGINAL SOURCE

COVINGTON, La. (AP) - The defense in the case of a man facing an obstruction of justice charge in last November's death of a would-be Ku Klux Klan member from Oklahoma is seeking a hearing to determine his mental condition.

The motion for such a hearing for Shane Foster is set to be heard April 21 in state district court in Covington.

Foster is the son of Raymond Foster, who faces a second-degree murder charge in the case.

The victim was 43-year-old Cynthia Lynch of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Authorities said she was recruited over the Internet to join a small Klan faction. She is believed to have been shot in November after a disagreement with Raymond Foster, who has pleaded not guilty. Shane Foster has entered pleas of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity.

Neo-Nazi's, Dirty Bombs, and an Angry Wife

This is Amber Cummings. She shot her husband a couple of months ago, you may remember reading about it here. It seems that there was a lot more going on in that house than Amber being abused. There is a breif mention of this in some mainstream media, but this article gives more details.

TO ORIGINAL SOURCE
Maine neo-Nazi prepared "dirty bomb"?
Submitted by WW4 Report on Sat, 03/14/2009 - 04:43.
Trust fund millionaire James G. Cummings, a neo-Nazi sympathizer from Maine who was slain by his wife Amber in December, allegedly had the radioactive components necessary to construct a "dirty bomb," a newly released threat analysis report states. The man, allegedly furious over the election of Barack Obama, purchased radioactive materials over the Internet.

"According to an FBI field intelligence report from the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center posted online by WikiLeaks, an organization that posts leaked documents, an investigation into the case revealed that radioactive materials were removed from Cummings' home after his shooting death on Dec. 9," reported the Bangor Daily News March 10.

"Amber indicated James was very upset with Barack Obama being elected President," reported the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center. "She indicated James had been in contact with 'white supremacist group[s].' Amber also indicated James mixed chemicals in the kitchen sink at their residence and had mentioned 'dirty bombs.'"

"Also found was literature on how to build 'dirty bombs' and information about cesium-137, strontium-90 and cobalt-60, radioactive materials," said the Bangor Daily. "The FBI report also stated there was evidence linking James Cummings to white supremacist groups. This would seem to confirm observations by local tradesmen who worked at the Cummings home that he was an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler and had a collection of Nazi memorabilia around the house, including a prominently displayed flag with swastika. Cummings claimed to have pieces of Hitler's personal silverware and place settings, painter Mike Robbins said a few days after the shooting."

The story of the first attempt at constructing a "dirty bomb" in the United States was not carried by any mainstream press outside of Maine. (RawStory, March 9)

Remember all the hype about an al-Qaeda "dirty bomb" that saturated the media a few short years ago—and turned out to be a dirty lie? Yet this one seems to be going down the Memory Hole. We're also reminded how, despite all the hoopla about ethnic profiling, the media didn't recall that the last time there was a conspiracy for a terrorist attack on the New York subways it didn't come from Muslims, but from a neo-Nazi redneck named Larry Wayne Harris who planned to kill hundreds of thousands by unleashing bubonic plague toxins. He was a fat, middle-aged white guy and he was from the Midwest, not the Mideast.

Women Protected By Hate Crime Laws? You Tell Me

I found this article by Denise Marie Santiago at the Democrat and Chronicle.Domestic violence, and violence against women, is a mahor problem in this contry and around the world, for certain. However, the issue here is "hate crime." Attacks on homeless people are at an all time high and some groups have been suggesting covering the homeless under hate crimes legislation, as well.

The question that I have here is how many groups of people should be protected by hate crime laws, and how effective is hate crime sentencing enhancement?

March 6, 2009


Violence against women is a form of hate crime


The recent stories about the beheading, the burning and the beating of women have me thinking that a group trying to make violence against women hate crimes is on to something.

Because, really, what else is there to explain that kind of torture but loathing and intimidation? Not much, in my mind.

There's the Buffalo man who is accused of repeatedly stabbing his wife with a hunting knife, before decapitating her just days after she filed for divorce.

According to The Buffalo News, Muzzammil Hassan — who moved to Rochester from Pakistan to attend college in the '80s and formerly worked for Kodak — had a history of abusing both his first and second wives before allegedly killing the third.

I was thinking about that case after reading this week that more than 100,000 young women in India die in fires each year and that domestic abuse is suspected in many of those deaths, according to a study published in a British medical journal and reported by the Associated Press. Young women were three times more likely than men their age to die in fires, according to the U.S.-based researchers who ran the study.

Then there's the high-profile case of celebrities Chris Brown and Rihanna, whose bruised and swollen face has made the rounds on the Internet and on TV.

Brown, just 19, was charged Thursday in Los Angeles with two felony counts of assault and criminal threats for allegedly beating up his 21-year-old girlfriend. Police said that Brown punched, bit and choked Rihanna until she lost consciousness, and he threatened to kill her when she pretended to summon police.

The clincher is that the two celebrities reportedly are back together, which has people questioning the example they're setting for today's young people.

Bad ones, if you ask me.

But Catherine Mazzotta, who heads the local Alternatives for Battered Women, cautioned against making judgments.

Domestic violence is about control, she said, and there are many reasons victims stay with abusers: religion, children, or excuses that seem to make sense.

"Looking from the outside, it may not look very complicated," she said, "but from the inside, it's very complicated."

The lesson from Brown and Rihanna's situation?

"You will be affected by this issue regardless of who you are," Mazzotta said. "The highest risk factor for being affected by domestic violence is that you're female."

That brings me round to the group that recently gathered in Albany on the hate crime issue.

"We believe that these vicious, violent crimes against women, including rape, murder and the recent beheading of the woman in Buffalo, are because they are women," a Suffolk County state legislator told the Democrat and Chronicle's Albany bureau.

Assemblywoman Patricia Eddington announced last week that she was sponsoring legislation that would require police to consider violent acts against women as possible hate crimes.

Gender is now mentioned as a factor to be considered in hate crimes law, but it's rarely used when women are victims, say women's groups.

We don't need to look around the world, around the country or even to Buffalo to see the effects of domestic violence. It was a factor in nearly a dozen local killings last year, says a local domestic violence consortium.

I'm for legislation that would give law enforcement more avenues to prosecute those cases and to protect women.

To contact Alternatives for Battered Women, call (585) 232-7353.

A REAL IMAGE PROBLEM

Now I gotta tell ya...I'm not a Republican and I am certainly no Limbaugh fan, so all of the current machinations taking place are just pleasing the hell out of me. First there is Micaheal Steele...

TO ORIGINAL SOURCE


March 8, 2009
New Chairman Boos G.O.P. When He’s Not Cheerleading
By JODI KANTOR
None of the guests seemed to be complaining, yet Michael Steele stood at a Fifth Avenue fund-raiser in New York on Wednesday evening and defended his month-old tenure as chairman of the Republican National Committee. His glasses had been askew since he pleaded his case on television that morning, and now he threw up his arms in admission.

Yes, some of his problems in the job were “self-inflicted,” he said, “but I do things to get a reaction.”

There is no wondering which things he meant. Since taking office, Mr. Steele has joyfully gone to war with his own party, often live on television.

Most chairmen wave the party flag; Mr. Steele smiles and shreds it. A man of constantly colliding analogies, he compares Republicans to drunks in need of a 12-step program and to the mentally ill. He has insulted Rush Limbaugh and moderate Republican senators alike, and he has promised a “hip-hop makeover” that would attract even “one-armed midgets” to his party.

Mr. Steele is the party’s first African-American chairman, his election a response to a history-making Democratic president. But now his performance is raising questions: Does he have a strategy, or is he simply saying whatever comes to mind? Republican moderates have staked hopes of reform on him, betting that his race and frank style will foster a new image of the party, but is this what they expected?

“I’m trying to move an elephant that’s become mired in its own muck,” Mr. Steele said in an interview last week in his sunlit Capitol Hill office, pausing whenever he appeared on the giant television close by his desk.

“You can say, ‘He’s crazy, he’s running off at the mouth,’ ” he said. “Or you can say, ‘It kind of makes sense, and I get it.’ ”

Since he became chairman, Mr. Steele, 50, has shown some of the same impulses that have governed and sometimes sabotaged him from an early age. He has at times rejected his own environment — becoming a Republican when everyone he knew was a Democrat, leaving jobs after short stints and attacking those who helped make him successful.

He has often been a victim of his own impetuousness. He worked his way through law school at night and won a job at a top firm, but he failed the Maryland bar exam because, he says, he took it on a whim. He is a born actor, a high-school musical ham whose instinct to perform can undermine his credibility (in the interview, he said he would accept Stephen Colbert’s recent challenge of a hip-hop duel).

Even those who applaud Mr. Steele’s vision of a more inclusive Republican Party wonder if he can execute it. “Does he have the mettle to wage that type of fight?” asked Benjamin T. Jealous, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Mr. Steele says that he does, but that he is entirely willing to risk failure. “I always found it interesting that people would cast aspersions on failure, as if it were a bad thing,” he said.

For decades, top Republican officials have looked at Mr. Steele and seen the promise of minority votes. He was recruited in the 1980s by Lee Atwater, a strategist who was the first of many excited by the charismatic, black Roman Catholic.

Outside politics, Mr. Steele struggled. He tried the priesthood but left as a novice. Later he practiced law for seven years in Washington (after passing the Pennsylvania state bar, he said), then started a consulting firm that made so little money that he almost lost his home.

But in the weak Maryland Republican Party, in a state that is 30 percent black, Mr. Steele was an instant hero. (The moment she saw him, said Joyce Terhes, the former state party chairwoman, she knew he was a keeper.) He zoomed from volunteer to state chairman to running mate in a race for governor.

Before the 2002 election, The Baltimore Sun published an editorial saying that because of his lack of experience, Mr. Steele brought “little to the team but the color of his skin,” outraging him and his supporters.

When Mr. Steele became lieutenant governor, he found himself among the highest-ranking black Republicans in the country, instantly embraced by President George W. Bush and his allies. Speaking to black groups, he was often the only Republican in the room, and in some Republican gatherings, the only African-American.

More than other black Republicans, “he has this unique capacity to connect with black audiences in a pretty soulful way,” said the talk show host Tavis Smiley. When Mr. Steele ran for the Senate in 2006, Russell Simmons, the hip-hop music executive and a Democrat, went to Maryland to endorse him.

Running in an unpopular year and state for Republicans, Mr. Steele tried to shed ties to his party. He called the “R” in Republican a “scarlet letter” and omitted his affiliation from advertisements: instead he talked about his love for puppies, his mother and the music of Frank Sinatra. On Election Day, campaign workers passed out sample ballots that listed him as a Democrat.

Still, Mr. Steele lost by almost 10 points, attracting only a quarter of the black vote. (He is still dogged by finance questions, like a $40,000 payment to a defunct company owned by his sister. He has said the payment was legitimate and that he is cooperating with a federal investigation.)

But among Republicans watching the rise of Barack Obama, Mr. Steele seemed more popular than ever. In early 2007, when Mr. Steele walked into a conservative forum on minority outreach, “you would have thought that he’d won,” said Doug Heye, his former spokesman.

Two years later, Mr. Steele ran for party spokesman as much as party chairman. He promised to bring wholesale reform and to present a new face of the party: black, engaging and funny.

He was something of a celebrity candidate — a paid Fox News contributor endorsed by Sean Hannity who served as a surrogate for Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign and originated the “Drill, baby, drill” chant that rang through Republican rallies.

His prospects improved further when two white candidates ran into race-related problems — one distributed a song calling Mr. Obama a “magic negro,” another had been a member of an all-white country club — and stoked Republicans’ fears about appearing narrow-minded.

Still, Mr. Steele won the post only on a sixth ballot.

“We have an image problem,” said Saul Anuzis, one of the losing candidates, “and that’s why people see a glimmer of opportunity with Michael Steele, not only because of his color.”

“He exudes enthusiasm,” Mr. Anuzis said. “That almost cavalier approach may turn some people off,” but during Mr. Steele’s recent television appearances, “I think a lot of the country was nodding their head saying, ‘Exactly.’ ”

The tactics that served Mr. Steele in his rise — calling out his party, using slang to connect with voters — may, however, hurt him as chairman. He has quickly become a target of late-night talk show hosts. And last week, after calling Mr. Limbaugh’s radio show “incendiary” and “ugly,” he provoked heckling not only from him but also from gleeful Democrats. (Mr. Steele apologized, delighting Democrats further.)

Even Mr. Steele’s pledge to recruit black voters is in question. Raynard Jackson, a Republican consultant, said that he and fellow African-Americans are glad about Mr. Steele’s election but uneasy about its timing. It looks too much like “let’s get a black person out there and let him attack the first black president,” Mr. Jackson said.

Last week, Ada Fisher, one of a handful of black Republican National Committee members and a persistent critic of Mr. Steele’s, called on him to resign, arguing in an e-mail message to the entire committee that he “makes us frankly appear to many blacks as quite foolish.”

But barring a mass revolt by members, which so far seems unlikely, Mr. Steele — who has never managed a large organization or won a race for public office on his own — has a two-year term in which to build a new operation, raise hundreds of millions of dollars and win enough races to reverse the Democratic tide.

About 70 staff members have already resigned or been fired, said Curt Anderson, a consultant Mr. Steele hired to assist him, while transition teams figure out how to restructure virtually every aspect of operations.

And as tempestuous as the past month has been, Mr. Steele said in the interview, Republicans should get ready for more. “I’m very spontaneous,” he said, comparing working with him to riding a roller coaster without knowing when the next dip or curve might come.

“Be prepared; you have no idea,” he said. “Just buckle up and get ready to go.”

___________________

Next you have the antics of Rush Limbaugh...

TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE


It wasn't a fight I went looking for. On March 3, the popular radio host Mark Levin opened his show with an outburst (he always opens his show with an outburst): "There are people who have somehow claimed the conservative mantle … You don't even know who they are … They're so irrelevant … It's time to name names …! The Canadian David Frum: where did this a-hole come from? … In the foxhole with other conservatives, you know what this jerk does? He keeps shooting us in the back … Hey, Frum: you're a putz."

Now, of course, Mark Levin knows perfectly well where I come from. We've known each other for years, had dinner together. I'm a conservative Republican, have been all my adult life. I volunteered for the Reagan campaign in 1980. I've attended every Republican convention since 1988. I was president of the Federalist Society chapter at my law school, worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and wrote speeches for President Bush—not the "Read My Lips" Bush, the "Axis of Evil" Bush. I served on the Giuliani campaign in 2008 and voted for John McCain in November. I supported the Iraq War and (although I feel kind of silly about it in retrospect) the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I could go on, but you get the idea.


Reinventing the GOP
Republicans face a daunting challenge in re-making and re-marketing their party. Who will shape that effort? Newsweek spoke to four leading Republicans:

Newt Gingrich: It's Not About The Base
Eric Cantor: It’s All About Jobs
Mark Sanford: Build From The Local Level
Paul Ryan: Let The Idea People Lead
I mention all this not because I expect you to be fascinated with my life story, but to establish some bona fides. In the conservative world, we have a tendency to dismiss unwelcome realities. When one of us looks up and murmurs, "Hey, guys, there seems to be an avalanche heading our way," the others tend to shrug and say, he's a "squish" or a RINO—Republican in Name Only.

Levin had been provoked by a blog entry I'd posted the day before on my site, NewMajority.com. Here's what I wrote: President Obama and Rush Limbaugh do not agree on much, but they share at least one thing: Both wish to see Rush anointed as the leader of the Republican party.

Here's Rahm Emanuel on Face the Nation yesterday: "the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican party." What a great endorsement for Rush! … But what about the rest of the party? Here's the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of "responsibility," and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence—exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we're cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush's every rancorous word—we'll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.

But do the rest of us understand what we are doing to ourselves by accepting this leadership? Rush is to the Republicanism of the 2000s what Jesse Jackson was to the Democratic party in the 1980s. He plays an important role in our coalition, and of course he and his supporters have to be treated with respect. But he cannot be allowed to be the public face of the enterprise—and we have to find ways of assuring the public that he is just one Republican voice among many, and very far from the most important.

_____________________________________________

Can anyone say "Implode!" I'm just cracking up.

Mississippi Racism Still Burning?

The Southern Poverty Law Center posted this article on its blog a couple of days ago. We don't talk very much about Barrett because, for the most part, he stays pretty low-profile and he's just this quirky little guy who raises his head every once in awhile. Every once in awhile he gets a media shot - when everyone else has turned them down. However, we do talk about the Mississippi legislature, the racist Haley Barbour, and the racism that is often still apparent within that state. Any thoughts on Barrett or the obvious acceptance of his ideology?

TO ORIGINAL SOURCE


Mississippi Legislature Honors Event Hosted By White Supremacist

Posted By Sonia Scherr On March 3, 2009 @ 1:25 pm In White Supremacist | 6 Comments


The Mississippi Legislature has voted once again to honor an occasion organized by a staunch white supremacist.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate [1] approved resolutions last week designating March 2 “The Spirit of America Day” to commemorate the achievements of standout male high school athletes in Mississippi. What the resolutions fail to mention is that “The Spirit of America Day” events are hosted by [2] Richard Barrett, an attorney in Learned, Miss., and the head of the Nationalist Movement, a white supremacist organization that advocates striking down civil rights laws and organizes white power events nationwide.

He’s also chairman of the board of America’s Foundation, the Mississippi sports organization that’s sponsoring “The Spirit of America Day.” The day involves bringing the chosen students to the Mississippi capital of Jackson for an awards ceremony and other activities. This year, seven teenagers were selected on the basis of their athleticism, leadership and citizenship.

“The endeavors of these individual students to be productive and contributing members of society provide the model example for other students to pattern themselves after, in efforts of becoming notable and model citizens for future generations to come,” states the [3] resolution adopted by the House.

That resolution passed on a voice vote even after Democratic Rep. Robert Johnson told his fellow representatives that Barrett was “an avowed racist,” according to the Associated Press. “He’s not ashamed of it; he doesn’t apologize for it,” Johnson said.

Some lawmakers seemed to feel that the resolution was acceptable because it honored the students rather than Barrett. “I’m not concerned about this individual,” Democratic Rep. Joe Warren told the AP. “I’m concerned about these young people being honored by this.”

The resolution is expected to be reconsidered this week; some lawmakers have suggested omitting the “The Spirit of America Day” references from the resolution as a way to avoid helping Barrett while still commending the teenagers.

Nonetheless, Barrett sounded pleased about the resolutions’ passage in an interview with the AP on Friday. “I think that’s a good lesson of how patriotism and Americanism depend on majority rule,” he said. “It’s a great lesson in democracy that we’re learning.”

This isn’t the first time lawmakers have hailed “The Spirit of America Day,” now in its 39th year. “The Mississippi government’s repeated recognition of him [Barrett] would be a comical Ground Hog Day parody but for the vitriol of his bigotry,” Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, told Hatewatch.

Barrett, 65, has long denigrated minorities. In his 1982 autobiography, The Commission, he called for resettling non-white Americans to “Puerto Rico, Mexico, Israel, the Orient and Africa,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. He also argued that “the Negro race … possess[es] no creativity of its own [and] pulls the vitality away from civilization.” And he favored sterilization and abortions of those deemed “unfit.”

Never one to miss an opportunity to exploit racial tension, [4] Barrett marched on Martin Luther King Day last year in Jena, La., to deride King and the six black teenagers subjected to unusually harsh prosecutions for an attack on a white student. Nationalist Movement members and supporters chanted slogans such as, “If it ain’t white, it ain’t right.”

Last fall, he planned a Louisville rally in support of James Forde Seale, who was convicted of facilitating the Klan murder of two black teenagers. (The conviction was later overturned on a technicality by a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.)

Barrett has also campaigned on behalf of other 1960s-era racist killers. After Byron de la Beckwith was convicted in 1994 of assassinating civil rights leader Medgar Evers, Barrett circulated a petition and led a march seeking a pardon from the Mississippi governor. In 2004, Barrett tried to sponsor a booth at the Mississippi State Fair backing Edgar Ray Killen, the former Klan leader who was found guilty of manslaughter in connection with the deaths of three civil rights workers.

Although he suggested to the AP that he doesn’t share his racist views at “Spirit of America” events, the day isn’t Barrett’s only youth outreach effort. Barrett invited skinheads to his home in December 1988 for a weekend of paramilitary training, according to the ADL. The few teenagers who attended tried to hit a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. during target practice, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported.

Despite criticizing the violence encouraged by certain extremist groups, Barrett currently runs an online forum for skinheads, where last week he referred to Obama as “Chimpanzee-in-Chief.” His racist message is a hit with the young men who post there. ”No matter how many laws you pass a white woman will always be the ultimate prize and target of black men,” reads one recent post. “Long live you my brave brothers and thank God for this forum and the wise words of Richard Barrett.”