Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) has received a lot of attention for calling President Obama a liar last night when he asserted that undocumented immigrants will not benefit from health care reform. Most commentators and politicians have denounced Wilson’s unruly behavior, though not enough have bothered to highlight the inherent fallacy of his accusations. Undocumented immigrants are in fact explicitly barred from receiving any health care benefits under both the House and Senate bills and a closer look at all those who restlessly suggest otherwise sheds some light on the radical nativist underpinnings of their anti-health care reform crusade.

To begin with, Wilson is a member of the Southern heritage group, Sons of Confederate Veterans, which favors secession and defends slavery is stock full of white supremecists and right-wing extremists. Crooks and Liars further reports that, as a state legislator, Wilson went against his own party and voted with seven lone right-wingers to keep the Dixie Rebel flag flying over the South Carolina state capitol building.

As a federal lawmaker, Wilson became a member of the House Immigration Reform Caucus (HIRC), a group of (mostly Republican) representatives founded by former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) with the mission of stopping “the explosive growth in illegal immigration,” “reversing the growth in legal immigration,” and halting “amnesties.” Other notoriously anti-immigrant members of HIRC include Steve King (R-IA), who described immigration as a “slow-motion Holocaust,” and Lamar Smith (R-TX), who equates undocumented immigrants with “terrorist weapons.” HIRC members Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), and King all proclaimed that undocumented immigrants would receive health care benefits long before Wilson’s outburst. The two Republican representatives, Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) and Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV), who proposed amendments to the House health care bill that would’ve added stringent citizenship verification mechanisms are active members of the HIRC as well. Heller and Deal also lead the fight to overturn the 14th Amendment and end the policy of automatically granting anyone who is born in the country US citizenship.

Wilson’s reaction last night was certainly out of line, but his indefensible fit of temper was illustrative of a larger discussion taking place amongst HIRC members and anti-immigrant groups who see the health care debate as yet another opportunity to promote their nativist agenda by advancing illogical fears, misplaced anger, and calculated misinformation. HIRC is now headed by Brian Bilbray (R-CA) — a former lobbyist for the anti-immigrant hate group, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The Center for New Community reports that FAIR paid him almost $300,000 for work on its behalf between May 2002 and July 2005. Since then, Bilbray has announced his intentions to “work closely” with groups such as FAIR and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), another “FAIR spin-off group” that has been identified as part of the “nativist lobby.” It comes as no surprise that HIRC’s health care reform haters have regularly relied on the shoddy “expertise” of FAIR, CIS, and their sister-group, NumbersUSA, to promote the myth that undocumented immigrants will be covered under the bill. Another anti-immigrant group, Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC), has gone as far to call Wilson a “brave Congressmen” for calling Obama out on his “lie” and have advised their membership to personally thank him.

Wilson has co-sponsored several pieces of English-only legislation and supported efforts to report undocumented immigrants who seek emergency medical care. In 2006, he declared “it is time to curtail the invasion of illegal aliens.”

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In an article exploring the Ahmadinejad-led “purge” of Iran’s intelligence service, David Ignatius relays this story:

One Iranian political figure has told a Western intermediary that the Obama administration may have unwittingly encouraged the regime’s power grab by sending two letters to Khamenei before the June election. The first, delivered through Iran’s mission to the United Nations, was a general invitation to dialogue. Khamenei is said to have taken a month to answer, and then only in vague terms. A second Obama administration letter reiterated U.S. interest in engagement. According to the Iranian political figure, this may have emboldened Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to think they had a free hand on June 12.

This suggests that Khamenei and Ahmadinejad felt that they did not have “a free hand” in Iran before President Obama sent letters and wished them a Happy Nowruz, which sounds pretty strange to me. The steady takeover of key Iranian state institutions by the hardline faction that supports Ahmadinejad, and is favored by Khamenei, had been occurring for over a decade. This faction was given a huge political boost by President Bush’s “war on terror” policies, which did a great job of confirming hardliners’ propaganda about belligerent U.S. intentions, weakening moderates and making talk of improved U.S.-Iran relations political poison.

An alternative interpretation, one that I’ve heard voiced by a number of analysts, both conservative and progressive, is that Obama’s outreach caused hardline elements in the regime to overplay their hand out of fear that victorious moderates would be able to deliver the U.S.-Iranian détente that a substantial portion of Iranians clearly desire.

According to Patrick Disney of the National Iranian American Council, Ignatius’ anecdote “has it completely backwards.”

Iran’s hardliners had a free hand when George Bush threatened them with military strikes at every turn. It was only when Obama came out with a sensible plan for engagement that Khamenei and Ahmadinejad actually felt threatened. The hardliners knew the majority of Iranians want détente with the US, and they recognized that Obama’s outreach would very likely reveal them — not the West — as the intractable actor.

Everyone knows that whoever delivers a rapprochement with the US will be seen as a hero by the Iranian people. But nothing scares Khamenei and Ahmadinejad more than the idea of a world without the US boogeyman to justify their every move. So they tried desperately to resist change — they cracked down on June 12 because they knew Obama could be a rallying point for moderates to get their foot in the door, and the hardliners just couldn’t accept that.

Examining their behavior over the past few years, it seems clear that Iran’s hardliners were far more “emboldened” by Bush’s supposed “toughness” than by anything President Obama has done in the nine months of his presidency. The hardliners rightly feared that they would be the losers in any warming of U.S.-Iran relations, which could explain the usually meticulous Khamenei’s uncharacteristic overreach, the comically obvious election-rigging, and the eventual security crackdown. Obama’s outreach only “emboldened” the hardliners in the sense that it elicited their over-reaction, resulting in the Islamic Republic’s most serious crisis of legitimacy since the revolution.