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Let's get ready to RUMBLE!
The stage is set. Conservatives are fighting one another to see who will dominate the now defunct Republican party. Christian Conservatives led by James Dobson have been running things since Newt Gingrich launched his Southern Strategy back in '94, but some conservatives are not staying silent any longer about the dominance the religious zealots have had. Kathleen Parker has been speaking up ever since Bill Kristol convinced John McCain to nominate Sarah Palin as VP in their losing effort. She was blasted for it by angry righty wingers.

KURTZ: Here is what you wrote this week: "Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn't, I should off myself."

Now, this is all because some readers didn't like what you had to say about Sarah Palin.

PARKER: Some people were very upset. Approximately 11,000 so far, and counting.

Yes, I wrote about Sarah Palin stepping down from the ticket. I felt after her third interview -- I didn't think any of her interviews were very good, but the third was catastrophic -- that she ought to leave the ticket and let McCain try to put somebody else in place to do a better job and help him with maybe the economy.

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KURTZ: What about the reaction? All those e-mails, all the vitriol directed at you, I mean, that has got to be somewhat depressing. Are you expected because you are on the conservative side of the spectrum to defend any nominee the Republican Party throws out there?

James Dobson is none too happy with Parker for not embracing the extremely radical values of Palin and is now urging his flock to go after Parker in his latest screed.

So, Kathleen Parker has determined that getting rid of social conservatives and shelving the values they fight for is the solution to what ails the Republican Party (“Giving Up on God,” Nov. 19). Isn’t that a little like Benedict Arnold handing George Washington a battle plan to win the Revolution?

Whatever she once was, Ms. Parker is certainly not a conservative anymore, having apparently realized it’s a lot easier to be popular among your journalistic peers when your keyboard tilts to the left. She writes that “armband religion” — those of us who “wear our faith on our sleeve,” I suppose, or is it meant to compare socially conservative Christians to Nazis? — is “killing the Republican Party.” Lest readers miss the point, she literally spells it out. The GOP’s big problem? G-O-D.

TAKE ACTION
Do you have something you'd like to say to Kathleen Parker about her recent column criticizing socially conservative Christians and their involvement in matters of government and public policy? You can send her an e-mail — please be respectful — through our Action Center.

This is an interesting fight taking place. The other favorite of social repressors is Bobby Jindal, the man who love Intelligent Design and brags about exorcisms. Poor Kathleen Parker, I almost feel for her.
Who will win?

Dear Ann Coulter:

No matter how tempting it might be, we're not going to be mean-spirited and all schadenfreude over your recent jaw wiring, like some people who are celebrating the fact that it apparently will shut you up for awhile.

For one thing, we've had friends who've had their jaws wired shut and it's a singularly unpleasant experience we wouldn't wish on anyone, not even miserable excuses for humanity for whom it might be a small piece of karmic justice. Getting your meals through a straw for months on end really, um, sucks.

And besides, we're not so foolish as to suppose that this will actually silence you. After all, you're at least as well known for the hateful, crazy crap you write as for the hateful, crazy things you say.

My guess, in fact, is that being denied a verbal outlet for your venom, you'll just pack that much more crazy into your writing. We can hardly wait.

In the meantime, we do hope that all that money you're making from in far-right investment scams is helping to pay for all this ...

Love, your friends at C&L

That poll created by wingnut John Ziegler purporting to demonstrate that Obama voters were misinformed by the mainstream media about Barack Obama and Joe Biden (and defended so scatalogically by Ziegler) has been examined by objective polling experts beyond Nate Silver now, and the verdict is unanimous:

Wall Street Journal:

"..Interpreted the numbers from the survey in a misleading fashion."

Pollster.com:

The Zogby summary quotes Ziegler claiming that "the poll really proves beyond any doubt the stunning level of malpractice on the part of the media in not educating the Obama portion of the voting populace."

The problem, as Silver points out, is that the survey does no such thing. It proves only that Obama voters surveyed were less likely to attribute to Obama or Biden a half dozen statements that were "at best debatable, yet apparently represented as factual to the respondent" ...

... Describing his biased, leading questions as a legitimate test of knowledge is hugely misleading, at best.

Even John Zogby himself is running from this survey, claiming it was put together while he was on vacation. While paying lip service to its ostensible validity, he adds:

“I also believe it was not our finest hour. This slipped through the cracks. It came out critical only of Obama voters.”

Worth noting, however: Everyone seems in agreement that this was not a "push poll" in the strict sense of the term, but rather was in a similar vein of being a misleading survey deployed for partisan political purposes.

Ziegler himself has posted a rambling, incoherent defense that attempted to answer the chief issue -- the factual invalidity/dubiousness of many of his questions -- thus:

These questions were carefully chosen to try and identify which news stories broke through the clutter and reached the average Obama voter. Ironically, one of the main reasons that the questions enrage the left is that many of the questions were based on news stories that the left-wing media ignored. In other words, because the left-wing ignored the negative aspects of Obama's past, they weren't reported and therefore weren't significant (or didn't really happen)and so any mention of them is evidence of a right-wing agenda lacking in credibility. Holy circular argument Batman!!

Many left-wing blogs (and many of the thousands of e-mail I have recieved from their readers) are absolutely obsessed with trying to prove that the wording of certian questions was not 100% accurate, as if that would have made any difference at all except in the case of the question about Russia.

Actually, as we already pointed out, the questions were far from 100 percent accurate, and in many cases were nearly 100 percent inaccurate:

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I'm sure a lot of you were wondering what happened to Ann Coulter this election season. The right has trotted her out to wage culture wars reliably ever since 1998. But she hardly was visible at all this year.

Well, if you happen to be one of those lost souls who belongs to the Conservative Book Club, then you received one of these e-mails in your Inbox this week from Coulter.

[Click here to see the full letter.]

As you can see, it's a letter that starts out by teeing off the emerging right-wing meme attempting to blame Barack Obama for the current economic meltdown, mostly by noting that Wall Street firms donated more heavily to Obama's campaign than to John McCain's:

If you've been wondering why the financial industry is in meltdown -- and taking your 401(k) or investment portfolio down with it -- now you know.

Let's face it: The former frat boys who populate Wall Street today understand economics as well as the pinko professors whose courses they snored through.

Now, it's true that Democrats were heavily preferred by Wall Street campaign donors this year, but that has far more to do with their historic preference for lining up behind the perceived likely winners of a given election season. And even a blind pig -- or a right-wing pundit -- could sense before the season even started that the Republican brand was giving off the distinct odor of fetid slop.

But if those same Wall Street pinko-educated frat boys are as ignorant of economics this year as Coulter claims, then wouldn't they have been equally so in 2000 and 2004, when they gave heavily instead to Coulter's then-preferred candidate, George W. Bush? Something doesn't exactly add up here.

That's all just throat-clearing, though, for Coulter's main pitch: She's selling you a financial newsletter written by a fellow named Mark Skousen, whose PhD in economics seems to impress Coulter mightily (if only she gave as much credence to people who actually won the Nobel Prize in economics).

Three years ago, Skousen was selling the same scam through the Heritage Foundation, promising super-hot stock tips if only you subscribed to his pricey investment newsletter. No word on how that hot tech stock actually did -- but I'd wager it performed about as well the return on assisting former Nigerian prime ministers.

Skousen, however, is not just your average "conservative economist." He actually is an adherent of the same far-right school of "libertarian" economics as Ron Paul: he advocates a return to the gold standard, the dismantling of the IRS and the Federal Reserve, and most of the other conspiratorial nonsense that accompanies these theories. Like Paul, he's a devotee of the Ludwig Van Mises Institute, which promotes much of this malarkey, and he's likewise actually a Bircherite in libertarian clothing. Indeed, Paul was one of the headliners at Skousen's "FreedomFest" earlier this year in Las Vegas.

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[Image courtesy Tom Tomorrow.]

Nate Silver interviewed John Ziegler, the wingnut who commissioned that falsehood-based poll purporting to demonstrate that Obama voters were stooopid.

Silver's questions, as you can see, are perfectly normal and reasonable, but Ziegler completely loses it. By the end, he's doing a Cheney.

It starts to go downhill when Silver, who know a wee bit about polling, asks a perfectly reasonable question:

NS: Why would you commission a survey question with no correct response?
JZ: The purpose of the question, you pinhead, was we wanted to determine the Tina Fey Effect.

In short order, Ziegler starts attacking Silver over the phone:

NS: Where the interviews conducted by telephone or online?
JZ: How can you ask a question like that and pretend that you have any clue what you're writing about! That's unbelievable that someone could write what you did! That is unbelievable that you wouldn't know that it's a telephone or an online poll and that you went on my summaries of the questions before the questions were even released!

NS: We’ve heard reports from our readers that very similar questions had been asked in an online format. There was no online component at all?
JZ: That is correct, which you would have known if you had looked at the information. Before you called this a push poll -- you don't seem to know the definition of a push poll. How do you have this website?

NS: What did Zogby charge you -- what did you pay for this survey?
JZ: I'm not going to tell you that, I'm not a fucking idiot.

By the end, Ziegler is simply hostile -- not to mention thoroughly convinced that his bullshit don't stink:

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[Video: Ron Paul decries "New World Order" at Nashville rally, Oct. 2007]

Ron Paul already has a considerable track record of actively promoting Patriot-movement "New World Order" conspiracy theories. In recent years, he's even been joined by mainstream right-wing pundits like Glenn Beck.

And while you didn't hear Paul spouting much of this nonsense during his presidential campaign, now that the election is over, he's back to business as usual -- and predictably, he's casting Barack Obama as the new embodiment of the conspiracy.

Paul recently gave an interview to a conspiracy-theory radio program in which he warned against "a cataclysmic shift toward a new world order":

Commenting on the much touted “International crisis” that luminaries such as Colin Powell, Joe Biden and Zbigniew Brzezinski have all guaranteed will occur within weeks of Obama entering the White House, the Congressman stated that he believes it may be a catalyst for a shift toward world government:

“I think it’s going to be an announcement of a new monetary order, and they’ll probably make it sound very limited, they’re not going to say this is world government, even though it is if you control the world’s money and you control the military, which they do indirectly.”

“A world central bank, worldwide regulation and world control of the whole system, of all the commodities and all the natural resources, what else can you call it other than world government?”

“Obama wouldn’t be there if he didn’t toe the line, and when the meeting starts on November 15th for the new monetary system, this could be the beginning of the end of what’s left of our national sovereignty.” Paul said, also warning that the global media are already hailing Obama as the world’s leader.

It has been clear for awhile now that the far right would see an Obama presidency as a pretext for reviving its 1990s-style conspiracy-mongering and scapegoating on a broad scale, and so far that's clearly the case. We saw signs of this before the election with the resurrection of zombie 1990s-style black-helicopter smears of Obama.

And now Ron Paul, who successfully presented himself as a mainstream "libertarian" throughout the campaign -- when the reality is that he is a classic Bircherite -- is advancing "New World Order v.2" for mass consumption.

Boy, we can hardly wait to see what this produces. [/snark] If the 1990s -- when last we endured a wave of paranoid fearmongering like this -- were anything to judge by, it won't be pretty. The next four years or more are as fraught with rightist peril as they are with promise for progressives.

[From Creative Loafing.]

As we predicted before the election, Barack Obama's victory has loosed a flood of hatefulness from the racist right in America. Digby yesterday had a detailed post laying out some of the cases that have erupted so far. From an AP report:

Threats against a new president historically spike right after an election, but from Maine to Idaho law enforcement officials are seeing more against Barack Obama than ever before. The Secret Service would not comment or provide the number of cases they are investigating. But since the Nov. 4 election, law enforcement officials have seen more potentially threatening writings, Internet postings and other activity directed at Obama than has been seen with any past president-elect, said officials aware of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue of a president's security is so sensitive.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

In rural Georgia, a group of high-schoolers gets a visit from the Secret Service after posting "inappropriate" comments about President-elect Barack Obama on the Web. In Raleigh, N.C., four college students admit to spraying race-tinged graffiti in a pedestrian tunnel after the election. On Nov. 6, a cross burns on the lawn of a biracial couple in Apolacon Township, Pa.

The election of America's first black president has triggered more than 200 hate-related incidents, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center – a record in modern presidential elections. Moreover, the white nationalist movement, bemoaning an election that confirmed voters' comfort with a multiracial demography, expects Mr. Obama's election to be a potent recruiting tool – one that watchdog groups warn could give new impetus to a mostly defanged fringe element.

I talked to the SPLC's Mark Potok this morning, and here are his observations:

I think there's something remarkable happening out there. I think we really are beginning to see a white backlash that may grow fairly large. The situation's worrying.

Not only do we have continuing nonwhite immigration, not only is the economy in the tank and very likely to get worse, but we have a black man in the White House. That is driving a kind of rage in a certain sector of the white population that is very, very worrying to me.

We are seeing literally hundreds of incidents around the country -- from cross-burnings to death threats to effigies hanging to confrontations in schoolyards, and it's quite remarkable.

I think that there are political leaders out there who are saying incredibly irresponsible things that could have the effect of undamming a real flood of hate. That includes media figures. On immigration, they have been some of the worst.

There's a lot going on, and it's very likely to lead to scapegoating. And in the end, scapegoating leaves corpses in the street.

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On Saturday's Chris Matthews Show, a panel featuring NPR's Michele Norris, Time's Michael Duffy and CNBC's Erin Burnett ponders who's going to be leading the GOP charge against the Obama administration in the coming months. Matthews wonders initially if it will be Sarah Palin, and the guests chew on that briefly, until Howard Fineman sets them all straight:

Matthews: There's a role open right now. It's the Chief Jeerleader. When the new administration takes office, no matter how historically wondrous it is, like Barack Obama's, there's gonna be someone on the other side who leaps to the chance be the person who dumps on the parade every day. Is it gonna be Sarah Palin?

Michele Norris: It's going to be a bit hard for her to do that from Alaska. I mean, some of that depends on -- frankly, it depends on you, you know ... whether you give her the kind of airtime that she needs to do that.

But she's also got to make sure she keeps the people back in Alaska happy. And she's got to improve her favorability ratings there and make sure that she takes care of business. I think perhaps that's a role she sees for herself. But I think that more likely the 'chief jeerleader,' ot use your term, may come out of the Senate, because that's where the real squabbles are going to be as they try to push forward this bailout package.

Matthews: You know, when you look at her, she seems so confident. You wonder whether we keep forgetting that we don't pick the president, they pick themselves, and we choose among them. And as long as she's willing to keep picking herself as a possible candidate for president, she's gonna be in this running.

Michael Duffy: Oh, I think she's done a very smart thing here. She knew that if she was ever gonna come back, she had to put this clothes thing to rest now, this week.

Matthews: Erin, did she put that to bed?

Erin Burnett: Ah, I think that's unclear. I'd like to pause for a second there. I think this speaks to her strengths and her weaknesses. She's incredibly strong in motivating people. She can say quick one-liners, she energizes. But sometimes you say, where's the depth there, where's the substance? There's not really much there behind it. There's not a whole lot of thoughtfulness in her delivery. And sometimes a great politician doesn't really need those things necessarily. So I don't really know the answer to your question, but I don't know that I need to know the answer. Just say that she can be a great politician.

Matthews: You don't need to be that complicated to be a great politician, this is probably true. But that leaves open the big question: Who will be the voice of the opposition for the next couple of months, first year of this administration? Will it be a Pawlenty, a Palin, a Bobby Jindal, Mitt Romney? Will it be John McCain?

Norris: Again -- I don't think it's going to be John McCain. I think we learned a lot about McCain after he ran for election last time, he went back and really rolled up his sleeves and worked. I don't think it's gonna be him. I still think it's going to come out of the Senate. I think it's going to be one of the senators.

Howard Fineman: It won't be out of the Hill at all. It's going to be Rush Limbaugh, and what's left of the conservative commentariat. They are going to be in charge of this party until the Republicans begin to get their act together.

Matthews: So the ticked-off voices.

Fineman: The ticked-off voices, and Rush will be the guy.

If he's right that Limbaugh and the Venom Brigade are going to be in charge of the GOP (and he probably is), the main question remains: Will they just drive the Republican bus deeper into their muddy ditch, or careen it off into a bottomless chasm?

Before Election Day, the NRA was doing what it always does: Raising the specter of the liberal bogeyman -- you know, the Incipient Dictator Who Wants To Take Your Guns Away -- in the person of Barack Obama. See, for instance, this ad.

So it shouldn't really be a big surprise that, after the election, one of the only segments of the retail economy that did well was in guns:

Weapons dealers in much of the United States are reporting sharply higher sales since Barack Obama won the presidency a week ago.

Buyers and sellers attribute the surge to worries that Obama and a Democratic-controlled Congress will move to restrict firearm ownership, despite the insistence of campaign aides that the president-elect supports gun rights and considers the issue a low priority. Video Watch shoppers snap up guns of all types »

According to FBI figures for the week of November 3 to 9, the bureau received more than 374,000 requests for background checks on gun purchasers -- a nearly 49 percent increase over the same period in 2007. Conatser said his store, Virginia Arms Company, has run out of some models -- such as the AR-15 rifle, the civilian version of the military's M-16 -- and is running low on others.

Such assault weapons are among the firearms that gun dealers and customers say they fear Obama will hit with new restrictions, or even take off the market.

There is also a racial component to these fears, which surfaces in attitudes like those voiced in this NYT piece about the decline of the South's political influence:

"I am concerned," Gail McDaniel, who owns a cosmetics business, said in the parking lot of the Shop and Save. "The abortion thing bothers me. Same-sex marriage."

"I think there are going to be outbreaks from blacks," she added. "From where I'm from, this is going to give them the right to be more aggressive."

But mostly, this is paranoia about gun ownership whipped up by the NRA:

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Democrats are going to need to recognize that there are real limits to the current urgings of "bipartisanship." Because the fanatical right has no intention of dealing with Obama in good faith.

Exhibit A: Michael Reagan:

EXPOSE LIBERAL CORRUPTION -- With the Democrats back in power in both Congress and the White House, you KNOW that they'll be falling right back into their habits of taking lobbyists' money under the table, trading votes for campaign contributions, spying on and sabotaging Republican legislative plans, covering up their leaders' sexual "flings," and spending taxpayer money on personal expenses like never before. But this time, YOU AND I will be there every step of the way, making sure that no stone is left unturned, every dark corner is filled with light, and every illegal act is paid for with censure, impeachment, recalls, investigations, and jail time for every criminal we expose in Washington, D.C.

As Matt Stoller says:

Reagan is basically giving the playbook for the conservative movement, which is to kick up dust, accuse everyone associated with Obama of sexual misconduct, personal corruption, pay-to-play politics, and lobbyist ties, and then call for impeachments and investigations. And this isn't some loon. Reagan's not only the (adopted) son of a former President, he's a conservative pundit with, well probably not a million listeners but a good number. And he's a well-received citizen of the DC establishment, taking the blame the media narrative to an remarkably audacious level. Though he's called CNN the Terrorist News Network, Reagan appeared on Larry King as recently as October to appear opposite Robert Kennedy Jr, and he has refused to appear on MSNBC because he claims he receives death threats, or so he said at an exclusive party for television industry executives at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

He's also the guy who went on the air a few months ago and said this:

There is a group that's sending letters to our troops in Iraq ... claiming 9/11 was an inside job -- oh, yeah, yeah -- and that they should rethink why they're fighting. Who -- we ought to -- excuse me, folks, I'm going to say this: We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them.

Really. Just find the people who are sending those letters to our troops to demoralize our troops and do what they are doing, you take them out, they are traitors to our country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that, deal with it. But anyone who would do that doesn't deserve to live. You shoot them. You call them traitors -- that's what they are -- and you shoot them dead. I'll pay for the bullet.

It will be instructive indeed to observe who goes marching off with Reagan on his quest for ignominous irrelevance.

Zvika Krieger at TNR has a solid report on the demise and dissolution of the Minuteman movement:

In this environment, Gilchrist's movement is falling apart, overtaken by new members whom he describes as "troublemakers with personality disorders and criminal propensities." In contrast, he insists that the group's original members were able to give voice to the immigration concerns of ordinary Americans because they demonstrated "a passionate allegiance to the United States of America and its priceless principles." There is no doubt that the Minutemen--aided by sympathizers in the media like Lou Dobbs--drove the national conversation in 2005. But whether the enormous wellspring of American anger over illegal immigration that they claim to have tapped into actually existed is another question.

However, it's not merely Gilchrist's organization (The Minuteman Project) that's falling apart; so is the other major "Minuteman" outfit, cofounder Chris Simcox's Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

For what it's worth, I reported on this aspect of the story, as well as Gilchrist's, back in October for The American Prospect:

Today the Minuteman movement is beyond mere disarray; it is in the early stages of complete decay. The arc of the Minutemen's decline and fall happens to trace almost precisely that of previous right-wing populist movements, notably the Klan of the 1920s and the militias of the 1990s. The pattern goes like this: The group is beset by financial manipulators who seem naturally drawn to them. Then, following an initial wave of popularity, the group splinters under the pressure of competing egos into smaller, more virulent entities who then unleash acts of public ugliness and violence that eventually relegate them to the fringes.

The Minutemen haven't quite reached that final stage yet, but they are well on their way. And while that may be welcome news to those who oppose the Minutemen's nativist agenda, that last stage represents some natural and equally toxic consequences.

Wow, the right wing bloggers are really cracking up over Obama's victory. You don't believe me? Check this post out by John Hinderaker. I know he adores President Bush and thinks he's a genius and all, but this is a remarkable post.

The Importance of Being Careful

Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly.

He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn't raise his standards, he will exceed Bush's total before he is inaugurated.

Hinderaker actually believes this. It's weird because most Conservatives do believe that Obama's communication skills served him quite well during the election process. I guess he also missed this latest polling data that says Bush is leaving office more unpopular than Richard Nixon.

And they wonder why America has turned their backs on Conservatism.

The "Obama is a Liberal Fascist Hitler" meme has been floating around since at least February, if not before. And now that the election's over and voters can't punish Republicans for spouting this kind of nonsense, it's getting a fresh life.

F'r instance, there's the Georgia Republican congressman who foresees young Brownshirts emerging from Obama's proposal for a national civilian-service corps:

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

Sounds like someone's been reading too much Jonah Goldberg. Of course, Jonah's adherents at sites like Red State and Gateway Pundit think Rep. Broun is on the right track.

Meanwhile, there's also the Texas state education-board member who fears that Obama is secretly plotting with Muslim terrorists to destroy America:

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I know everyone wants to take a breather after the election, but it's probably a good thing to remember that the wingnuts never rest.

Already, they're sharpening their knives should Obama select Jamie Gorelick as attorney general:

She has also drawn criticism for her role at the Justice Department, in which she allegedly created an intelligence “wall” that hindered counterterrorism agents in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks. Conservatives called for her removal from the Sept. 11 commission, but her fellow members rallied around her and said critics were distorting her record. The criticism grew so heated that the F.B.I. investigated a death threat against her family, and President Bush had to intervene personally to stop the Justice Department from releasing sealed reports involving her. Some conservative bloggers have already begun trying to derail Ms. Gorelick’s possible nomination as attorney general, pointing to her experiences at both Fannie Mae and the Sept. 11 commission.

What CNN reported at the time:

"I can confirm that I've received threats at my office and my home," she told CNN on Saturday. "I did get a bomb threat to my home."

She added, "I have gotten a lot of very vile e-mails. The bomb threat was by phone."

ABC News first reported the story Saturday.

The threats were "scary," she said, but added that she was "not intimidated enough to resign from the commission."

All this occurred after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft accused Gorelick of authoring a memo that he and other conservatives blamed for creating a bureaucratic "wall" that they said caused the intelligence failures leading to 9/11 (a dubious claim at best, considering that Ashcroft had previously testified elsewhere that this "wall" had existed since the 1980s).

The conservative noise machine leapt into action -- most notably Rush Limbaugh, who claimed that "Gorelick really ran the place while Janet Reno was the face of the Justice Department" and that she "erected a wall and because the Clinton administration determined that they were gonna fight terrorism not as a war but as a legal matter."

As you can see from the video, Bill O'Reilly also chimed in on Fox. Right-wing operative Dick Morris also said on Fox News: "Of ALL of the public officials in the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, the ONE who is MOST directly responsible, in my judgment, for 9/11 happening, is Jamie Gorelick."

Expect an encore.

All of the talk about the special Newsweek report describing the backstage events in this year's presidential campaign has focused on various revelations about Sarah Palin's astonishing lack of knowledge about global and national affairs, as well as her spending sprees.

But this passage seemed at least as significant, if not more so:

The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied. Michelle Obama was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. "Why would they try to make people hate us?" Michelle asked a top campaign aide.

Tim Shipman at the Telegraph (UK) has more:

Details of the spike in threats to Mr Obama come as a report last week by security and intelligence analysts Stratfor, warned that he is a high risk target for racist gunmen. It concluded: "Two plots to assassinate Obama were broken up during the campaign season, and several more remain under investigation. We would expect federal authorities to uncover many more plots to attack the president that have been hatched by white supremacist ideologues."

Irate John McCain aides, who blame Mrs Palin for losing the election, claim Mrs Palin took it upon herself to question Mr Obama's patriotism, before the line of attack had been cleared by Mr McCain.

There was a reason, I think, that people were repelled by the ugliness that proceeded from the McCain/Palin campaign this year -- common sense, after all, should tell you where this kind of ugliness was heading. It showed up at the polls.

The problem is finding a way to put out the fuse that they lit.