Editors’ Blog
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04.17.14 | 1:38 pm
Klan on Shooter: He’s No Klansman

While the Mayor of Frazier Glenn Miller’s hometown agrees with him that the Jews are destroying America, a state Klan leader says no real Klansman would go off yelling ‘Heil Hitler’ like Miller did. In any case, he says, the Klan’s not a hate group anymore. They’re focused on defending the constitution and prayer in schools.

04.17.14 | 12:28 pm
Is There a Fox Effect?

Continuing our ‘Hard to Handle’ series, TPM Reader RL talks about the acculturating effects of two very different institutions: the US military and Fox News …

I’m sure you’ve heard many stories from your readers about kindly relatives who were racists. Mine go back a couple of generations. I was raised in a military family and despite the conservatism inherent in the military, socially (at least as far as race goes) it has always been reasonably progressive. By the time I was growing up in the 60’s it was fully integrated and my parents racial views more or less followed the military lead.

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04.17.14 | 11:32 am
Mayor not anti-Semite, Just Thinks Jews Destroying America

The local paper in the hometown of Jewish Center shooter Frazier Glenn Miller seems oddly solicitous of the town’s new Mayor who has spoken up as a supporter of Miller’s views. Says the Aurora Advertiser

Utilizing his First Amendment rights, Clevenger has made what some term as anti-Semitic and racist comments. The comments came as he spoke about the alleged involvement of local resident Frazier Glenn Miller (also known as Frazier Glenn Cross) in the shooting and subsequent deaths of three individuals in Overland Park, Kansas, on April 13.

Interestingly, Mayor Clevenger’s views came in for some controversy before he was elected last week when an old letter to the editor emerged in which he championed Miller’s views and decried the “Jew-run medical industry” and the “Jew-run government backed banking industry.”

Clevenger insists he’s not a racist or anti-semite but was only “point[ing] out the corporations responsible for destroying the United States are run by Jews.”

04.17.14 | 10:51 am
No, That’s Not Okay

Mayor of Marionville, Mo faces impeachment after telling local media he agreed with Jewish Center shooter Frazier Glenn Miller’s views, if not his actions.

When contacted yesterday by TPM’s Tom Kludt Mayor Clevenger said he was done discussing his agreement with Miller’s views.

04.17.14 | 9:54 am
Hate Group Threatens to Sue TPM for Calling it a “Hate Group”

So Friday we got a demand letter from a anti-immigrant hate group down in Arizona, threatening to sue us for identifying them as a “hate group”. After our lawyers sounded the all clear, we reported deeper on the story and discovered the big problem is the top cheese in the organization, Glenn Spencer, thinks the persistent “hate group” label is preventing him from selling his crack new anti-immigrant border technology to the feds. Here’s the story.

04.17.14 | 9:26 am
Missing Flight (Coverage) Tragedy Claims New Victim

Mitchell, the beloved pilot on CNN’s endless missing plane flight simulator segments, fired for “shaming” Canada.

04.16.14 | 10:36 pm
Comments Update

We’d hoped to open the beta testing phase of our new comments system to the larger community this evening. We just about got there. But there was one more performance enhancement we wanted to do before we did so. We hope to have the beta larger for the whole community tomorrow morning.

04.16.14 | 3:01 pm
This is Going to Be Good

For those who watch these things the exquisitely fragile glass jaw of the Brian Ross investigative unit at ABC News has been an extremely open secret for roughly forever. And now it seems like ABC’s (extremely ill-considered fight) to try to force its way into a Pulitzer Prize could bring it all out. Here’s the story – where they’re burned scorchingly by the folks they’re trying to take the prize from.

For those life forms that subsist on schadenfreude, this could be the feast of all feasts.

04.16.14 | 1:08 pm
Harder to Handle

Must read from TPM Reader SB

I know from my personal experience that people with strong racial and other biases are unlikely to admit those biases even to themselves. I grew up in a Republican family. My parents voted the straight Republican ticket in every election. They never espoused hatred toward blacks, hispanics, Jews, or any other group.

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04.16.14 | 12:04 pm
Don Cheadle, Rick Perry, and Climate Change’s Impact on One Texas Town

It’s thrilling to have a weekly blog on TPM – at least for the next nine weeks while our series, Years of Living Dangerously, runs on Showtime. As Josh noted a few days ago, the two of us go back to when his office was a corner table in the Starbuck’s north of Dupont Circle and he wrote TPM all by himself.

Early along, when my partner, Joel Bach, and I were searching for strong characters who could help tell the climate change story, I hopped on a plane for Lubbock, Texas, to meet Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, who teaches climate science at Texas Tech. I’d heard a lot about Katharine – a distinguished climate scientist who’s also an Evangelical Christian.

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