Last night, J.T. Ready, a neo-Nazi anti-immigrant activist with ties to a top Arizona Republican, reportedly killed four people in Gilbert, Arizona before shooting and killing himself. Ready previously ran for Mesa City Council as a Republican, and was seeking the Democratic nomination to be Sheriff of Pinal County at the time of his death. Although the local Democrats promptly disowned him after he announced his intention to do so.

While Ready’s most prominent past supporter, former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce distanced himself from Ready after his association with the neo-Nazi became widely known, a border vigilante group he helped found called the U.S Border Guards expressed their condolences and said he would be sorely missed. A message posted on their website today read, “God bless you, J.T. You will be fiercely missed:”

Other activists of the same far-right ideological ilk as ready expressed a mix of denial and conspiracy theorizing. As the Southern Poverty Law Center’s blog reports:

In general, the theories surrounding Ready’s death follow a few expected narratives: that Ready was killed by drug smugglers; that Jews running the federal government had come calling; even that Ready was acting in self-defense when he was killed. Whatever the flavor of conspiracy, it’s not surprising that Ready’s death should garner such a response. He was a darling of the movement – a well-spoken and husky presence on the border, almost always armed as if he were going to war.

For all the denials from respectable conservatives now, Ready traveled unusually close to the conservative mainstream for someone on the radical fringe, such as by speaking at Tea Party rallies and holding party positions in the local GOP.

If you feel like you’ve seen an exceptional number of negative campaign ads — think black and white images, booming voices, and terrifying statistics — you aren’t alone. It turns out that this year’s presidential campaign season has been the most negative on record with 70 percent negative ads, according to a new Wesleyan Media Project study.

But it isn’t the candidates alone who are suddenly flinging mud. While the use of negative ads by the candidates has spiked (it was 8.6 percent in 2008, and it’s 52.5 percent this time around), the bigger change is in outside group’s campaigns, which have grown enormously according to Erika Franklin Fowler, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project:

One reason the campaign has been so negative is the skyrocketing involvement of interest groups, who have increased their activity by 1100 percent over four years ago… But we cannot attribute the negativity solely to outside groups. Even the candidates’ own campaigns have taken a dramatic negative turn.

There’s a big reason for the increased involvement, and that’s Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that said outside groups can spend an unlimited amount of money on campaigns as long as they don’t “coordinate” with the candidate. That decision led to the advent of Super PACs, groups whose sole purpose it to spend money attacking their opponents and lauding the candidates they support. The results of the Super PAC campaign era are clear: In 2008, only 25.2 percent of outside group ads were negative — but today, 86 percent are.

Daniel Chong, an engineering student at the University of California, San Diego, was detained by Drug Enforcement Administration agents after he was found asleep at a friend’s house that was the target of a drug raid. Although the DEA never arrested Chong and had no plans to charge him with a crime, he was placed in a holding cell — and then left there for four days without access to food, water or a toilet:

The engineering student at the University of California, San Diego, told U-T San Diego that he drank his own urine to survive and that he bit into his glasses to break them and tried to use a shard to scratch “Sorry Mom” into his arm.

His lawyer Eugene Iredale said Chong went to his friend’s house on April 20 to get high and fell asleep. Agents stormed in at 9 a.m. the next day and swept him up as one of nine suspects in a raid that netted 18,000 ecstasy pills, other drugs and weapons.

He was questioned for four hours and then told that he would be released, Iredale told The Associated Press. Chong was handcuffed and placed back in a holding cell.

He remained in the 5-by-10-foot cell from April 21 until April 25, when he was taken out on a gurney by paramedics.

“He couldn’t fully stretch out his arms,” Iredale said. “There was no restroom facilities, no water, no food.”

The only view out was through a tiny peephole in the solid door. He could hear the muffled voices of agents and the sound of the door of the next cell being opened and closed. He kicked and screamed as loud as he could.

The DEA issued an apology yesterday for this incident. Chong is suing the DEA.

Last year, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre claimed that President Obama has done nothing to restrict the rights of gun owners in his first term because of “a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country” in his second term in office. As the Washington Post reports, this campaign of deception has only gotten more subtle:

The Obama administration is crafting a proposal that could make it easier to export firearms and other weapons to certain countries in an effort to boost sales for U.S. companies, increase trade and improve national security, according to senior government officials. . . .

At least two federal agencies — the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department — have expressed concerns that the changes in the export rules could make it easier for drug cartels and terrorists to obtain weapons and make it harder to stop firearms trafficking.

In all seriousness, if the Obama Administration honestly believes that increasing U.S. gun sales abroad is a worthy way to stimulate the economy, than they have the authority to make that decision. No one in the administration should have any illusions, however, that they will somehow placate the gun lobby by providing this gift to the gun industry. Indeed, the NRA has already made perfectly clear that they will view any Obama Administration effort to extend an olive branch as a part of some kind of elaborate bait-and-switch campaign to lure firearm lovers into a complacency.

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is facing another struggle to stay intact, this time in the House of Representatives. The House GOP looks likely to rewrite the domestic violence prevention bill, which passed the Senate last week, with the aim of stripping provisions for Native Americans, undocumented people, and the LGBT community — the same provisions that Senate Republicans tried to remove from the bill.

But despite the Senate’s ultimate passage of the bill — which included the support of 14 Republican senators, including all of the female Republicans — the House is ready to fight these provisions again. Their version of VAWA also removes the protections for marginalized communities. According to Congressional Quarterly, a watered-down bill, of which Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL) is the lead sponsor, is likely to pass in the House:

The House bill also would eliminate Senate language that supporters say would do more to help victims of domestic violence including gays and lesbians, immigrants and American Indians. Adams considers those provisions unnecessary, a spokeswoman said. “The grants are available to all victims, and there is no evidence to conclude that victims are being turned away,” said spokeswoman Lisa Boothe in an email.

The backing of Smith, of Texas, and California’s McCarthy signals the House measure is on a fast track to passage — and a showdown with the Senate.

While Adams may think the provisions are unnecessary, there is ample proof that she is mistaken. Cases of LGBT domestic violence increased 38 percent from last year. Seven people died from domestic abuse. And of those who sought it, 44 percent of LGBT victims were turned away from traditional shelters. As for Tribal victims, Native American women face the highest rate of domestic violence in the US — three and a half times higher than the national average — and can currently not seek any protection if the perpetrator is non-Tribal.

And undocumented victims? Maybe they aren’t “turned away” in Adams’s definition, but that’s because they fear that if they call the police, they will be deported.

Members of Congress have already seen heated debate around VAWA, with one member even recounting her own experience of being raped as a girl. With the attempt to strip out provisions for particularly vulnerable communities, the fight is likely to get even more difficult.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) strongly rejected a request by Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn (D) that he consider temporarily banning guns in the downtown area during this summer’s Republican National Convention. The city has already restricted sticks, polls, and water guns as it hosts the quadrennial nominating convention — but under Florida law, it cannot prevent protesters and others from carrying guns.

Buckhorn had asked the governor to step in, noting that while “Normally, licensed firearms carried in accordance with the Florida statute requirements do not pose a significant threat to the public,” in the “potentially contentious environment surrounding the RNC, a firearm unnecessarily increases the threat of imminent harm and injury to the residents and visitors of the city.”

In a letter, Scott told Buckhorn:

You note that the City’s temporary ordinance regulates “sticks, poles, and water guns,” but that firearms are a “noticeable item missing from the City’s temporary ordinance.” Firearms are noticeably included, however, in the 2nd Amendment. The choice to allow the government to ban sticks and poles, but not firearms, is on that the People made in enacting their state and federal constitutions.

Like you, I share the concern that “violent anti-government protests or other civil unrest” can pose “dangers” and the “threat of substantial injury or harm to Florida residents visitors to the State.” But it is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posted by those who would flout the law. It is at just such times that the constitutional right to self defense is most precious and must be protected from government overreach.

Scott concluded his letter arguing that political conventions and gun rights have coexisted since the dawn of the Republic and saying “I see no reason to depart from that tradition this year.

Less than two years after a mentally ill political opponent of Rep. Gabby Giffords used a pistol to kill six people and wound 13 more, it seems that the Democratic mayor’s efforts to ensure the safety of those attending the Republican convention might have received a more thoughtful response.

Yesterday, J.T. Ready, a neo-Nazi and member of the anti-immigrant Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, reportedly strapped on body armor, grabbed several firearms, and then killed four people in Gilbert, Arizona. One of the dead is a toddler. Ready also was killed in this incident, although reports vary on whether he took his own life. At the time of his death, Ready was running for Pinal County sheriff.

Ready’s beliefs were extreme even among extremists. In 2007, for example, he wrote that illegal immigration occurs because “negroids screw monkeys and rape babies in afreaka [sic]. Then stupid white man who licks kosher jew rear lets negroids in.” Yet Ready traveled surprisingly close to the center of power in his state. Ready claims he was a protégé to former Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce (R), the author of Arizona’s harsh immigration law who was recently removed from office in a recall election, and there is ample documentation that the two men knew each other and that Pearce once supported Ready politically.

Pearce and Ready’s relationship stretches back at least to 2004, when Pearce ordained Ready as an elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. By 2006, when Ready ran for Mesa City Council — a campaign that sputtered after the public learned that Ready was once court-martialed and kicked out of the Marine Corps — he received Pearce’s endorsement. Ready also claims that he was with Pearce’s son Josh when Josh Pearce got a tattoo of an iron eagle with a swastika on his neck and chest, but that he also talked Josh out of joining a skinhead group.

Pearce later tried to distance himself from Ready, but Ready insisted as recently as last year that Pearce was a seminal figure in his life. In an interview with a local Fox station, Ready called Pearce “a surrogate father” who “enlightened him,” that they spent time together at Pearce’s cabin, and that they were “around each other quite a bit.” In the same local news segment, Pearce admits that he had an association with Ready, but denies that it was as close as Ready suggests. Watch it:

Russell Pearce: Pioneer Against Illegal Immigration or Racist?: MyFoxPHOENIX.com

Ready is dead, and Pearce obviously has an interest in downplaying his relationship with Ready if a deep bond did once exist between the men. So it may never be known with certainty whether Pearce was the father figure Ready claims he was. Ready, however, does admit to one divide between him and the former Arizona senator. He claims that Pearce taught him to stay “more covert” for “long term strategy aims,” but Ready ultimately chose to ignore this advice.