In one of the most brazen examples of “blaming the victim” in recent memory, a school in Springfield, Missouri, has, according to a lawsuit, not only dismissed the rape claims of a seventh grade special education student, but also forced the girl to write and hand-deliver an apology letter to her alleged attacker. The lawsuit claims that the same student later raped her again. The school and other defendants have denied all charges.

According to the lawsuit, after the second attack, a rape kit was administered and the boy pleaded guilty to unspecified charges in juvenile court. But the school still refused to take the girl seriously — and even suspended her again, this time for “Disrespectful Conduct” and “Public Display of Affection.” The seventh grader reported her rape in the spring of 2009, and even though school officials are required by law to report such incidents to the authorities, Republic Middle School failed to do so:

The lawsuit alleges that school officials told her they didn’t believe her, and after “multiple intimidating interrogations,” she recanted. The lawsuit also notes that a school psychological report said the girl “would forego her own needs and wishes to satisfy the request of others around so that she can be accepted,” meaning she might have been especially susceptible to pressure to change her story.

But the pressure allegedly didn’t end there. The girl says she was made to write an apology note to her attacker and hand-deliver it to him. She was also expelled for the remainder of the school year.

When she came back the following year, the school allegedly refused her mother’s request for extra monitoring and did not separate her from her alleged attacker. In February 2010, the lawsuit says he “was able to hunt [her] down, drag her to the back of the school library, and again forcibly rape her.” She and her mother reported this rape to the police, and a rape kit tested positive for her attacker’s semen — he plead guilty to charges in juvenile court.

The lawsuit claims that the school forced the girl to write this apology letter without seeking her mother’s permission, and then expelled her for filing a false report. When the same student began harassing and assaulting her again when she came back to school, she did not tell school officials because she was afraid they would accuse her of lying and kick her out again. The victim’s family is seeking punitive damages “to deter School Officials and others from similar conduct in the future.”

The school district has denied the girl’s allegations. Most disturbingly, its response letter claims the girl “failed and neglected to use reasonable means to protect herself.”

One of the most disturbing groups swept into the semi-mainstream along with the Tea Party movement is the anti-government Oath Keepers, an militia group of current and former police officers and soldiers who vow to mutiny and defy orders if they are asked do to something that violates their radical view of the Constitution. The group’s founder Stewart Rhodes, a former staffer for Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), has appeared at numerous Tea Party rallies and on conservative radio and TV shows, and even alongside some Republican politicians, like South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

Underscoring the danger of the Oath Keepers is the case of Charles Dyer, a former Marine from Oklahoma who served in Iraq and is now the target of nationwide manhunt after he jumped bail on charges of possessing a stolen grenade launcher and raping a 7-year-old family member. Dyer’s first trial ended in a mistrial, but he didn’t show up for the new trial Monday. Police are clearly concerned he could be dangerous:

“We’re sure he’s going to be armed,” said Stephens County Sheriff Wayne McKinney of Dyer. “There’s no doubt about that.”

McKinney also said Dyer had begun posting messages threatening local law enforcement: “If the sheriff’s office came to his house, he was loading his weapons and putting his bullet-proof vest on and having a showdown with us.”

“What concerns me is his ties with some of these very radical groups,” McKinney said.

Watch a report from New 9 in Oklahoma:

The core philosophy of the Oath Keepers is a list of “10 orders we will NOT obey,” including, “disarm[ing] the American people,” “confiscat[ing] the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies,” and “blockad[ing] American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.” In early 2008, the Rhodes warned that a “dominatrix-in-chief” named “Hitlery Clinton” would impose a police state on America and shoot all resisters. After primary voters chose a different candidate, the Oath Keepers simply rewrote their paranoid fantasy with President Obama as the arch-villain.

Dyer claims he’s a patriot who is being unfairly targeted by the government to keep him quiet. He has made numerous web videos and blog postings explaining his beliefs, saying, “At every turn my family and I have been threatened and bullied by both the state and federal governments.”

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has been playing the “vet card” on the campaign trail, claiming military men and women would prefer to have one of their own as president over someone who has “never served a day in the military.” Perry went even further and criticized Obama’s “decision” not to serve in the military, saying, “The president had the opportunity to serve his country. I’m sure at some time he made the decision that isn’t what he wanted to do.”

Yet some veterans are pointing out that Perry has not always been their ally. In fact, he actually signed legislation that disenfranchises many of them. The Voter ID law Perry signed in May prohibits veterans from using their ID card from the Department of Veterans Affairs to vote, even though it is a government-issued photo ID. As a result, veterans are showing up to the polls and being turned away:

Allen Vaught, an Iraq War Veteran, who was awarded a Purple Heart [said] “Iowans, and Americans at large should know, however, that Governor Perry put partisan politics above the rights of veterans by recently signing a Voter ID Law in Texas that prohibits veterans from using their Department of Veterans Affairs ID card to vote.”

Vaught added, “Governor Perry knows full well that a Veterans ID Card is a legitimate, government-issued ID. In some cases, it’s the only government ID a veteran has. Veterans fought to protect our democracy. Yet, Governor Perry’s ill-conceived voter ID law will ensure that some veterans don’t get to participate in the democracy they fought to preserve.”

Vaught went on to say that Perry’s “record doesn’t stand up to his blustery rhetoric.” In Iowa, Perry has said he’s running for president to “make sure that every young man and woman who puts on the uniform of this country respects highly the president of the United States.” Perry served in the Air Force from 1972 to 1977.

Perry designated Texas’ Voter ID bill an “emergency item” under his power as governor. Vet Voice points out that just last week, Ann McGeehan, director of the Texas Secretary of State’s elections division, affirmed that photo ID cards issued by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are not acceptable forms of ID under Perry’s new law.

Disclosure laws preventing wealthy individuals and corporations from secretly influencing elections are one of the few protections left for ordinary Americans who cannot afford to pay to participate in our democratic system. Although Citizens United gave corporate America carte blanche to inject unlimited money into elections, it also held that disclosure laws “could be justified based on a governmental interest in ‘provid[ing] the electorate with information’ about the sources of election-related spending.”

Nevertheless, the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage sought to take away even this most basic protection in a pair of lawsuits challenging Maine and Rhode Island’s disclosure laws. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit didn’t bite:

In an age characterized by the rapid multiplication of media outlets and the rise of internet reporting, the ‘marketplace of ideas’ has become flooded with a profusion of information and political messages. Citizens rely ever more on a message’s source as a proxy for reliability and a barometer of political spin. Disclosing the identity and constituency of a speaker engaged in political speech thus ‘enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages…Additionally, in the case of corporate or organizational speakers, disclosure allows shareholders and members to ‘hold them accountable for their positions.’ [...] In short, ‘the First Amendment protects political speech; and disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to that speech in a proper way.’

The First Circuit’s conclusion — that voters should have the ability to decide whether they can trust the people who seek to influence their vote — is obviously correct. Nevertheless, secret money proponents have spun any number of paranoid fantasies regarding the impact of disclosure laws. NOM’s attorney James Bopp, for example, claims that anti-gay groups must be able to keep their donors secret to prevent those donors from being harassed — because clearly, the real threat to American democracy is people discriminating against anti-gay bigots. Meanwhile, industry groups spin elaborate conspiracy theories about government officials using disclosure laws to reward their political allies, and torture lawyer John Yoo even claims that disclosure “makes some of the Nixon-era ‘dirty tricks’ look almost quaint by comparison.”

Because there is nothing dirtier than requiring wealthy individuals and corporations to come out from the shadows and reveal which elections they want to buy.

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has already made a startling number of gaffes since beginning his presidential campaign just four days ago. But one that has slipped under the radar concerns how his state’s borders are patrolled to prevent illegal immigration. Perry has been governor for 10 years, 7 months, and 27 days — the longest serving governor in Texas history. Yet he apparently doesn’t know how the state’s borders are patrolled.

In recent remarks about border security, Perry suggested that the U.S. should use the same predator drones for border patrol that we use in combat abroad. The governor somehow missed that this has already been happening — in his own state, no less — for two years. Nathan Pippenger at The New Republic catches the governor with egg on his face:

If you’re an average voter (and not, say, the governor of Texas), you could be forgiven for not knowing the details of our current southwest border surveillance efforts, which include 250 towers with daytime and nighttime cameras, 38 truck-mounted infrared cameras and radar systems, 130 planes and helicopters, and, yes, a fleet of unmanned aircraft systems. [...]

It is not, in any way, a new idea. In fact, The New York Times reported on the use of unmanned aircraft at the border almost two years ago. And it’s been over six months since DHS Secretary Napolitano gave a major speech announcing that Customs and Border Protection had Predators covering the entire southwest border, from the El Centro sector of California all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. She even gave the speech in El Paso! This shouldn’t be news to the governor of a massive border state.

Perry said of predator drones on Saturday, “They have all the equipment, they’re obviously unarmed, they’ve got the downward-looking radar, they’ve got the ability to do night work and through clouds. Why not be flying those missions and using [that] real-time information to help our law-enforcement?”

The governor cannot have been paying very close attention to the security of his own state if he missed that just last month, Texas got its second Predator drone to patrol the border. And a third Predator drone in Arizona is used to monitor Texas border areas over the Big Bend region and El Paso. Perry’s criticism of the president for not using drones at the border doesn’t make much sense given that the Obama administration sought the money for the two additional Southwest border drones in a bill approved by Congress last year.

Pippenger notes that “the only possible charitable interpretation” of Perry’s comments isn’t very likely (that by “drones” Perry “specifically meant autonomous unmanned aircraft, not remotely-controlled unmanned aircraft,” although the term is commonly used to refer to both). But Perry seemed convinced he was proposing a novel border security solution. Since this new idea is actually already national policy, it naturally raises the question — what other vital information about the day-to-day operation of his state has Perry missed?