On Thursday, a man flew a plane into a Texas federal building in an apparent domestic terrorist attack. The suicide bomber, identified as Joseph Andrew Stack, was allegedly a right wing extremist who wrote on a website that violence “is the only answer” and expressed anger at the IRS, the federal government, and health care reform. Some on the fringe right have declared Stack a hero.

ThinkProgress caught up with Rep. Steve King (R-IA) at CPAC to talk about the attack in Texas. Asked if the right-wing anti-tax rhetoric might have motivated the attack, King implicitly agreed, noting that he had been a leading opponent of the IRS for some time. He noted that although the attack was “sad,” “by the same token,” it was justified because once the the right succeeds at abolishing the IRS, “it’s going to be a happy day for America.” He sidestepped the question of the legitimacy of the terrorists’ grievances, but sympathized by saying that “I’ve had a sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back”:

TP: Do you think this attack, this terrorist attack, was motivated at all by a lot of the anti-tax rhetoric that’s popular in America right now?

KING: I think if we’d abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn’t have a target for his airplane. And I’m still for abolishing the IRS, I’ve been for it for thirty years and I’m for a national sales tax. [...] It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.

TP: So some of his grievances were legitimate?

KING: I don’t know if his grievances were legitimate, I’ve read part of the material. I can tell you I’ve been audited by the IRS and I’ve had the sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back. … It is intrusive and we can do a better job without them entirely.

Watch it:

Last week, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), despite his long history of inflamed rhetoric about terrorism and domestic security, essentially disregarded the attack. As ThinkProgress’ Max Bergmann observed, “It is naive for Brown to think the dangers of right wing terrorism aren’t real. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security released a report warning of the dangers of rising right wing extremism, as was evidenced by the shooting at the Holocaust museum in D.C. and by a Pittsburgh killer who was partially inspired by Glenn Beck.”

Indeed, it’s not only hate radio personalities encouraging violence against the government. Far right members of Congress, like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), have called for people to get “armed and dangerous” against the administration’s clean energy policies. King’s quasi-embrace of the Texas terrorist’s grievances is similarly dangerous.

Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that some “high-profile Republicans are adopting a softer vocabulary on immigration” in an effort to woo alienated Latino voters. However, in his bid for reelection, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) hasn’t just toughened up his immigration platform, he’s also adopted a strategy which seems to consist of feigning ignorance of the troublesome civil rights issues that Latinos in his state are facing. In a weekend interview with a local Arizona news station, McCain presented himself as naively optimistic, at best:

HOST: Arizona is getting a national reputation as a latter-day Alabama or Mississippi when it comes to civil rights for Hispanics. Have J.D. Hayworth and his supports gone too far?

MCCAIN: Nah. Look, I don’t think Arizona has that reputation. I think Arizona has a reputation of being the one of the most wonderful places to live, work, and retire –

HOST: If you’re Hispanic?

MCCAIN: Yeah, I think if you’re in this country legally, you are happy to be here. We have a growing Hispanic citizen population here in Arizona. I just do not accept the premise.

Watch it:

McCain is understandably proud and defensive of his home state, however, his oblivious dismissal of the plight of Arizona Latinos demonstrates just how out of touch McCain is with a Latino electorate which used to constitute a large part of his base.

What McCain fails to recognize is that the immigration issue doesn’t draw a neat line between citizens and non-citizens — particularly in Arizona. To begin with, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio has admitted on national television that his officers use “speech, the clothes, the environment, the erratic behavior” to determine if an individual is an undocumented immigrant. That might explain why there are 2,700 lawsuits collecting dust on Arpaio’s desk — many, if not most, filed by Arizona Latino citizens who were mistakenly identified as undocumented immigrants by Arpaio’s deputies before being arrested and denied their most basic civil rights. Even former Arizona Police Chief George Gascon stated that Arpaio’s immigration policing program has brought the “police profession back to the 1950s and 60s.” Arpaio isn’t the only problem facing Latinos. Hate groups and hate crimes are on the rise in Arizona, with 19 hate groups that call the state home. A report by the Arizona Latino Research Enterprise entitled “The State of Latino Arizona” points out:

An increase in hate crimes against Latinos, legislative efforts by ultra-conservative politicians and other public officials, and stepped-up and sometimes abusive law enforcement activities targeting immigrants— including federal legislation that grants local police the authority to enforce immigration law—have added up to a widespread and increasingly institutionalized assault on the rights of Latinos…

“It’s more subtle than it used to be,” said Daniel Ortega, a leading civil rights attorney and community activist in Phoenix. “We find ourselves, as Latinos, whether documented or not, in a social situation in which our civil rights are not being respected.”

In his 2004 Senate re-election, McCain earned more than 70 percent of the Latino vote. However, during the 2008 presidential elections, McCain was unable to even carry the Latino vote of his own state. McCain is right that Arizona is home to a growing population of Latino voters. And if the former maverick doesn’t stand up to his state’s radical right to defend them, McCain runs the risk of being voted out of office and sent back home where he might end up learning firsthand how Latinos are really faring in his state.

I won’t waste any time with Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz’s assertions about the efficacy of gas sanctions, as I’ve already dealt with the issue in some detail. The authors trot out the usual claims, along with the usual absence of actual evidence to support them.

But I do want to take issue with Gerecht and Dubowitz’s claims about Iranian dissidents’ supposed support for gas sanctions. Responding to the view (held by the overwhelming majority of Iran analysts and Iranian opposition figures) that gas sanctions would actually weaken the opposition while strengthening the Revolutionary Guards, the authors insist that events since the June 12 presidential elections have “changed the entire political dynamic“:

If sanctions are waged in the name of the Iranian people, we are much more likely to see Western opinion remain solidly behind them. These sentiments will likely be reinforced by prominent Iranian dissidents who’ve moved from adamant opposition to severe sanctions to hesitant acceptance of the idea (Nobel Prize winner Shireen Ebadi, for instance).

As you may have gathered from the fact that the authors couldn’t find a single Iranian dissident to quote in support of their argument, the idea that Iranian dissidents would be interested in providing political cover for measures that would severely impact the same Iranian masses who they’re trying to recruit for their struggling movement is simply daft.

As for Shirin Ebadi’s “hesitant acceptance” of gas sanctions, here’s what Ebadi said earlier this month:

“I am against economic sanctions and military attacks. However, if the Iranian government continues to violate human rights and ignore people’s demands, then I start thinking about political sanctions,” Ebadi told a human rights forum on Iran. [...]

“Wider economic sanctions only hurt innocent people and we are against that,” she said.

Ebadi’s view tracks with what I’ve heard from other Iranian activists — sanctions that target the regime can be good and helpful, but sanctions targeting the population, such as gas sanctions, will hurt the pro-democracy movement.

I’m trying to come up with a way in which Ebadi’s statement “I am against economic sanctions” could be plausibly interpreted as “I hesitantly accept economic sanctions,” but I can’t. So I’m left with the conclusion that Gerecht and Dubowitz are simply being dishonest. Which is entirely consistent with the rest of the arguments we’ve been seeing in favor of gas sanctions.