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ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Bill Berkowitz
August 18, 2005

Immigration politics draws attention of David Horowitz

Catching wind of how hot the politics of immigration has become, Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture is teaming up with anti-immigration organizations to sponsor an upcoming conference in Beverly Hills

What do New York’s Democratic Senator, Hillary Clinton, New Mexico’s Democratic Governor, Bill Richardson, the only Hispanic governor in the country, and the Center for the Study of Popular Culture’s (CSPC) David Horowitz have in common?

The answer: the politics of immigration.

According to John Fund, writing in his Wall Street Journal column on Monday, August 15, 2005, Governor Richardson recently declared a “’state of emergency’ in four New Mexico border counties due to "a chaotic situation involving illegal alien smuggling and illegal drug shipments." The governor is also “pledg[ing] $1.5 million for stepped-up law enforcement and also asked Chris Simcox, the president of the volunteer border patrol group Minutemen, for a meeting.” According to Media Matters, however, "Richardson ... dismissed Fund's claim as a 'total fabrication,' and Simcox himself refuted Fund, stating it was the Minutemen who reached out to Richardson -- not the other way around."

Senator Clinton recently “made headlines when she embraced high-tech measures to control the border with Mexico and fines for employers who hire illegal aliens,” Fund writes.

While Governor Richardson and Senator Clinton may be seeking to get on board the immigration-issue train as they begin their long trek toward the Democratic Party convention in 2008, David Horowitz, it appears, is looking for another wedge issue to fulfill his ideological and fundraising needs.

Although it’s doubtful that Horowitz will take up a post at the US / Mexico or US / Canada border anytime soon -- as the Minuteman Project is proposing for October -- he apparently feels that he is well enough on his way to cleansing America’s colleges and universities of anti-patriotic liberal academics to test the roiling waters of immigration politics.

To that end, on Friday, August 26, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPS - website) is co-sponsoring, along with the Washington DC-based Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR - website) and the Coalition for Immigration Reform of California, a daylong conference on immigration at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.

The conference, which “will focus on the impact of Illegal Immigration on America relating to issues of: national security, the economy, society and politics,” has an all-star line-up that includes:

Congressman Tom Tancredo, a longtime anti-immigration activist who heads up the House Immigration Reform Caucus, that has done more than most elected officials to popularize the anti-immigrant cause within government circles.
Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor and a vocal conservative Republican who barely lost a bid for a Congressional seat last November.
Heather Mac Donald, a John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute (website), and a contributing editor to the Institute’s publication, City Journal. She is a recipient of 2005 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement.
John C. Eastman, a Professor of Law at Chapman University, specializing in Constitutional Law and Legal History. He is also the Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy.
Ray Haynes, a California Assemblyman who represents the 66th Assembly District, which includes portions of Western Riverside County and Northern San Diego County. The Riverside Enterprise Press called Haynes “one of the most outspoken conservatives in the legislature.”
Doug McIntyre is the host of McIntyre in the Morning, on Talk Radio 790 KABC.
Congressman Steve King (R-IA) is the former head of the King Construction Company who came to Congress as a “committed fiscal and social conservative,” and is “focused on agribusiness, tax issues, transportation and infrastructure, senior benefits, and an overall vision for the future of Iowans.” Among his other accomplishments, Congressman King claims to have sponsored the English as the Official Language Bill and The God and Country Bill.
Congressman Ed Royce (R-CA) is a strong social conservative who votes consistently against reproductive and gay rights. Under the category of “Civil Rights” on Royce’s website are listed his votes in favor of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and a constitutional amendment prohibiting flag desecration; a vote to ban gay adoptions in Washington DC, and a vote in favor of an amendment prohibiting burning the US flag.
Erin Adaire Anderson’s name surfaced twice during a Google search: Once for the upcoming conference, and the other for having been a guest discussing “illegal immigration via Mexico” on Conservative Roundtable and Face the Truth (website), public affairs programs of the ultra-right Conservative Caucus (website).
George Borjas, the Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, is the author of “Heaven’s Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy” (Princeton University Press, 1999) and “Labor Economics,” whose third edition was published this year.
James Edwards. I received the following email from Edwards, the host of The Political Cesspool Radio Program, aired Monday through Friday, 7pm-9pm Central - AM 1380 WLRM Memphis, Tennessee: “If it is me, this is the first I've heard about it! I have heard I was a confirmed speaker from other activists, but to my knowledge, I have not been contacted.”
Frank Gaffney is the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy (CSP - website) and a longtime advocate of the ultimate in border-watching devices, the Strategic Defense Initiative, aka “Star Wars.” Gaffney has been a frequent guest on cable television’s talking head programs advocating and continuing to defend President Bush’s War on Iraq.
Jim Gilchrist (website) is a co-founder of the Minuteman Project civilian border patrol organization, the group of volunteers/vigilantes who spent April guarding the US / Mexico border. (The Minutemen recently announced plans to organize 15,000 volunteers to guard the US / Mexico and US / Canada borders starting October 1.) As I write this, Gilchrist is considering a run as the candidate of the far right American Independent Party, the “California affiliate of the Constitution Party” (website), for the vacated congressional seat of Christopher Cox, recently confirmed as the new Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Otis Graham is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who, according to his website, is currently Visiting Scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. On his website Graham writes that, he “Currently... explore[s] the Population component of the ‘problem-cluster’ of population, resources, and the environment, especially the role of immigration in preventing population stabilization in the United States."
William Hawkins is senior fellow for national security studies at the U.S. Business and Industry Council Education Foundation (website) a sister organization to the U.S. Business and Industry Council (website) in Washington, D.C. According to the its website, Hawkins previously worked as Senior Research Analyst for Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and “hosted the weekly radio program In the National Interest ... heard nationally on the Information and Entertainment America Network from 1997 to 2000.”
Michael Hethmon, the Staff Counsel for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, recently testified at a hearing on H.R. 2933, the Alien Gang Removal Act of 2005, before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims.
Janice Kephart is a former counsel to 9/11 Commission and a senior consultant for The Investigative Project (website) founded and headed by anti-terrorism “expert” Steve Emerson. Kephart is “currently managing and acting as the chief editor and analyst for a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation on the ‘structure of Al Qaeda and Militant Islamic Terrorist Groups in the United States.’ She has titled the book The Enterprise of Terror in the United States.
Mark Krikorian is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Sudies (CIS - website).
Ira Mehlman is the co-founder of the American Jewish Immigration Policy Institute, and a spokesperson for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Glynn Custred is a professor of anthropology at California State University East Bay, and was the co-author and the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), the anti-affirmation action initiative passed by California voters in 1997.

‘Vulnerable on immigration’

The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund believes that President Bush is “vulnerable on immigration,” and that Governor Richardson and Senator Clinton could seize control of the issue.

Fund charged Clinton with wanting “to have it both ways” on the issue of immigration: “Despite her noises about beefing up enforcement, she did not talk about immigration, temporary-worker programs or border enforcement when she addressed the National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic civil rights group in the country."

According to Fund, Clinton “pandered to the liberal crowd and received a standing ovation when she announced a new bill that would guarantee in-state college tuition rates for the children of illegal immigrants as well as amnesty to some 65,000 illegal immigrant students who graduate from U.S. high schools each year.”

Clinton “won 85% of the Hispanic vote in New York for Senate in 2000," said former adviser turned adversary Dick Morris. "She thinks she can outbid the Republicans for Hispanic votes in 2008 while bringing Reagan Democrats home with vague rhetoric about getting tough and employer sanctions she has no intention of implementing."

“In New Mexico,” Fund wrote, “Governor Richardson ... blasts the federal government for not showing ‘the commitment or the leadership to deal with border issues’ ... [and at the same time] is demanding that officials on the Mexican side bulldoze an abandoned town on the border that serves ‘as a staging area for illegal drugs and illegal aliens.’” According to Fund, Richardson has reversed his position on these issues from as recently as late 2003, “when he showed up at a rally for the ‘Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride’ and told them, ‘Viva la raza! Thank you for coming to Santa Fe. Know that New Mexico is your home. We will protect you. You have rights here."

"Democrats clearly sense frustration on immigration among Bush's base voters and are trying to outflank him rhetorically on the right," Martha Montelongo, a talk-show hostess in California, told Fund.

Neoconservatives and immigration

Attitudes on immigration among neoconservatives and Jews appear to be changing dramatically, Tom Barry, the policy director of the International Relations Center (website), recently wrote in a piece for Inter Press Service:

Before the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the neo-conservative political camp and U.S. Jews were dependable allies against the restrictionist immigration policies of such organizations as the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Today, however, neocon institutes and synagogues are increasingly the forums for the type of nationalist immigration policies that were previously regarded as emblematic of the populist right-wing and the paleoconservatives in the United States.

Barry pointed out that the Center for Immigration Studies’ Mark Krikorian, a speaker at the CSPC conference, is ”the most high-profile lobbyist for restrictionist legislation,” and that he is happy to see “such leading neoconservatives as Daniel Pipes, director of the pro-Likud Middle East Forum, are now regularly raising alarms about immigration.

Shortly after 9/11, Krikorian’s CIS colleague, Stephen Steinlight, who used to be national affairs director for the pro-immigration American Jewish Committee and its representative in the pro-immigration National Immigration Forum, wrote, “We should give serious, immediate consideration to terminating our alliance with the advocates of open borders -- we do not belong in their coalitions.”

Ira Mehlman, another conference attendee said recently that ”American Jews need to look out for their own self-interest,” including the diverse threats from Muslim and Latino immigration.

”This is not about right-left politics,” said Mehlman, but ”about excessive numbers of immigrants coming here and placing a burden on our communities, our schools, and our economy.”

Barry concluded that, “The broadening anti-immigration coalition is yet another sign that the new intensity of the immigration debate is not so much a factor of macroeconomic cycles ... [but] is more a product of the politics of fear and nationalism now sweeping the United States, and a dimension of the cultural wars that are increasingly dividing the country and pitting the U.S. against foreign societies and nations.”

“I don’t recall Horowitz’s name popping up before around immigration issues,” Devin Burghart, who monitors anti-immigrant movements with the Illinois-based human rights group, the Center for New Community's Building Democracy Initiative, told Media Transparency in a telephone interview. “And he is politically savvy and smart enough to know that immigration is the hottest issue inside the GOP these days.”

Bush’s immigration plan appears to be going nowhere in Congress so “I think we’ll see a lot more opportunists like Horowitz stepping forward and trying to grab hold of the issue as time goes by,” Burghart added.

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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Bill Berkowitz
March 16, 2007

PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'

Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism'

On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.

In a story written just before Anderson's northern California appearance, Truckee Today's Karen Sloan described PERC as an organization that "contends that private property rights encourage good stewardship of natural resources." The story, headlined "'Enviroprenuer' scholar to speak at Resort at Squaw Creek," pointed out that "PERC scholars argue that government subsidies often degrade the environment, that market incentives can spur individuals to conserve and protect the environment and that polluters should be liable for the harm they cause others."

On its website, PERC -- a non-profit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1980 -- calls itself "the nation's oldest and largest institute dedicated to original research that brings market principles to resolving environmental problems." PERC maintains that it "pioneered the approach known as free market environmentalism."

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
March 10, 2007

Neil Bush of Saudi Arabia

During recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy'

In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."

Neil Mallon Bush, the son of President George H. W. Bush and the brother of President George W. Bush, attended the forum to renew old family friendships and to drum up a little business for his educational software company. "The Jeddah Economic Forum has been very productive," Bush told Arab News. "I have been to this conference four times since 2002. I have seen it develop from the very beginning. There was less participation in the past, now there is more international participation."

These days, Neil Bush is the chairman and CEO of Ignite Learning, a company devoted to developing technology-assisted curriculum. Ignite calls it COW: "Curriculum on Wheels." In an interview with Arab News' Siraj Wahab, Bush talked enthusiastically about his company's mission: "We are building a model in the United States for developing curriculum that is engaging to grade-school kids, and our model is to deploy this engaging content through a device. So it is easy for any teacher to use our device through projectors and speakers. The curriculum is loaded on the device. We use animation and video and those kinds of things to light up learning in classrooms for kids. It helps teachers connect with their kids. We are planning to develop an Arabic version of that model."

A video on Ignite!'s website makes clear the enervating, rote approach to learning taken by the Bush family. While this may not be an advance in actual education, it does serve to enrich Neil Bush and commodify teachers. In concept it is much like Channel One, whereby Chris Whittle enriched himself forcing millions of primary school students to watch repackaged TV News sandwiched between corporate advertising.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
March 2, 2007

Newt Gingrich's back door to the White House

American Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances

Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.

These days, Gingrich, who is simultaneously a "Senior Fellow" at the American Enterprise Institute and a "Distinguished Visiting Fellow" at the Hoover Institution, is making like your favorite uncle, fronting a YouTube video contest offering "prizes" to whoever creates the best two-minute video on why taxes suck. Although the prizes may not be particularly attractive to the typical YouTuber, nevertheless Gingrich recently launched the "Winning the Future, Goose that laid the Golden Egg, You Tube Contest." According to Newt.org, participants are to "Create a 120 second video explaining why tax increases will hurt the American economy, leading to less revenue for the government, not more. Or in other words, explain why we shouldn't cook the goose that laid the golden eggs (the American economy) by raising taxes."

Although he hasn't formerly announced his candidacy -- and he probably won't anytime soon -- Gingrich definitely has his eyes on the White House. He's just still figuring out how he will get there. Over the past several months Gingrich has been ubiquitous on the media and political scenes.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
February 25, 2007

American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against Iran

Despite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran

After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.

Long before the Bush Administration began escalating its rhetoric and upping the ante about the supposed "threat" posed to the US by Iran, well-paid inside-the-beltway think tankers were agitating for some kind of action against that country. Some have argued for ratcheting up sanctions and freezing bank accounts, others have advocated increasing financial aid to opposition groups, and still others have argued that a military strike at Iran's nuclear facilities is absolutely essential. For all, the desired end result is regime change in Iran.

If President Bush plunges the U.S. into some kind of military conflict with Iran, you can thank the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a key player in the current debate over Iran.

President Bush acknowledged as much when he recently appeared at the AEI for a much-publicized speech on his War on Terror, which focused on the front in Afghanistan.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
February 18, 2007

After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative

Unmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups

With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The other item that didn't get any State of the Union play is a project that was once envisioned to be the centerpiece of the president's domestic agenda: his faith-based initiative. As Joseph Bottum, editor of the conservative publication First Things -- "The Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life" -- pointed out, Bush "didn't mention faith-based initiatives, which...[he] once claimed would be his great legacy."

The president's faith-based initiative is facing several tough court battles.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
February 10, 2007

Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'

On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California

He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."

In a 10-page addendum to his new book ""Words that Work -- It's Not What You Say Its What People Hear," Luntz, formerly a top political pollster for the Republican Party, may have written so critically of the party's recent efforts that he has become persona non grata. Luntz used to be one of the party's go-to-guys for political guidance and strategy, a counselor to such GOP stalwarts as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former New York City Major Rudy Giuliani and Trent Lott.

"The Republican Party that lost those historic elections was a tired, cranky shell of the articulate reformist, forward-thinking movement that was swept into office in 1994 on a wave of positive change," Luntz wrote. According to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, Luntz went on to say that the Republicans of 2006 "were an ethical morass, more interested in protecting their jobs than protecting the people they served. The 1994 Republicans came to 'revolutionize' Washington. Washington won."

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
February 4, 2007

Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouse

Fueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director

As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Flash forward some 30-plus years and an Internet entrepreneur believes that it is time for a new conservative movement. He too has seen an entity on the left he admires enough to want to emulate: MoveOn.org.

"The left has been brilliant at leveraging technology," said Rod Martin, founder of TheVanguard.org, "and so have we to a point: our bloggers and news sites are amazing, and the RNC's get-out-the-vote software is unparalleled. But no one on our side has even begun to create anything like MoveOn. And after 2006, if we want to survive, much less build a long-term conservative majority, we better start, and fast."

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
January 29, 2007

Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihad

Founder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives

Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."

During a mid-December conference call Connerly allowed that he had scheduled visits to Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah during the upcoming months to get a handle on how many campaigns he might launch.

"Twenty-three states have systems for putting laws directly before voters in the form of ballot initiatives," the Chronicle pointed out. "Three down and 20 to go," Connerly boasted. "We don't need to do them all, but if we do a significant number, we will have demonstrated that race preferences are antithetical to the popular will of the American people."

"The people of California, Washington and Michigan have shown that institutions that implement these [affirmative action] programs are living on borrowed time," Connerly said.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
January 25, 2007

Tom Tancredo's mission

The Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics

These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.

Now, Tancredo, who has represented the state's Sixth District since 1999, has joined the long list of candidates contending for the GOP's 2008 presidential nomination. In mid-January Tancredo announced the formation of an exploratory committee -- Tom Tancredo for a Secure America -- the first step to formally declaring his candidacy. While his announcement didn't cause quite the stir as the announcement by Illinois Democratic Senator Barak Obama that he too was forming an exploratory committee, nevertheless Tancredo's move did not go completely unnoticed.

While voters' concerns over the war in Iraq and the GOP's "culture of corruption" predominated in the 2006 midterms, Tancredo will be doing his best to make immigration an issue for the presidential campaign of 2008.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
January 18, 2007

Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of Churches

New report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations

If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.

For those who remember a similar IRD-led attack on the World Council of Churches two decades ago the IRD's latest blast appears to be -- to borrow a phrase from New York Yankee great Yogi Berra -- "déjà vu all over again."

The IRD excoriated the World Council of Churches (WCC) for allegedly being tools of the anti-American left over its support of the Nelson Mandela-led African National Congress in South Africa, and its opposition to President Ronald Reagan's contra wars in Central America; wars that destabilized governments and were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. And now it is doing a similar job on the NCC.

"The institute, a Washington-based think tank, is allied with conservative groups on issues such as same-sex marriage. From its founding in 1981, its primary effort has been to challenge what it calls the 'leftist' political positions of mainline Protestant denominations, such as the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)," the Washington Post recently reported.

Author and longtime right wing watcher Frederick Clarkson recently described the IRD as an "inside the beltway, neoconservative agency [that] has waged a war of attrition against the historic mainline protestant churches in the U.S."

Read the full report >

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Immigration politics draws attention of David Horowitz

Catching wind of how hot the politics of immigration has become, Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture is teaming up with anti-immigration organizations to sponsor an upcoming conference in Beverly Hills

‘Vulnerable on immigration’

Neoconservatives and immigration

MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCH

PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'

Neil Bush of Saudi Arabia

Newt Gingrich's back door to the White House

American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against Iran

After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative

Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'

Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouse

Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihad

Tom Tancredo's mission

Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of Churches