Last month, conservative state lawmaker Peter Palumbo (D-RI) coined the offensive term “anchor embryos” on Fox News’ On the Record with Greta Van Susteren. “Anchor embryos” is a spin on “anchor babies,” a derogatory and “politically charged” term used to refer to the U.S. citizen children of undocumented parents. According to Palumbo, the “anchor embryo” phenomena is “unique” to Rhode Island because the state offers undocumented pregnant women prenatal assistance.

Last night, Palumbo returned to Van Susteren’s show to talk about his recent meeting with Arizona lawmakers and once again brought up “anchor embryos.” This time, however, he added that “we’re going to get inundated” by undocumented immigrants and that “it actually could be the collapse of our country”:

I explained last time we have something called the anchor embryos. We have such liberal programs were we take care — if you’re an illegal alien woman — you get to Rhode Island, you go to the Department of Human Services, they give you either Neighborhood Health, United, or Blue Cross. They’ll give you a card with $400 a month on it and allow you to spend it on everything but food because, sit tight, we’re gonna give you another $275 a month to spend on food. These programs are outrageous when people are dying. [...]

They’re coming in, they’re self-deporting and we’re going to get inundated and it actually could be the collapse of our country. We need to work together as a team to get this thing solved.

Watch it:

As I pointed out last time, it’s pretty ironic that Palumbo supports denying the mothers of future U.S. citizen children prenatal care as someone who also sponsored The Women’s Right to Know Act in 2002 which included provisions requiring doctors to “offer alternatives to abortion and about available public and private assistance for prenatal care, childbirth, and services available to help with children and families.”

In fact, anti-abortion activists have made a pretty big deal about ensuring that undocumented women have access to prenatal care assistance in the past, stating that it “improves the chances that a woman will choose to give birth rather than seek an abortion.”

Regardless of one’s position on abortion, there’s actually a strong economic argument to make in support of providing undocumented women prenatal care assistance. If a woman is denied prenatal care because she can’t afford it, there’s a much higher chance that complications will arise if she keeps the baby. Prenatal care is an essential preventive service that helps keeps costs down.

Jennifer L. Howse, Ph.D. of the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation writes that the “the cumulative weight of many studies is that prenatal care saves lives and money by reducing the number of babies born needing expensive neonatal care.” As Dan Agin of the University of Chicago further notes in his piece, “Health Care and the Unborn: Why We Need Free Prenatal Care,” that inadequate prenatal care is a tremendous health risk for both the mother and her child. “No pediatrician will deny this,” writes Agin.

Palumbo’s goal of ridding Rhode Island of undocumented immigrants and their embryos would likely have other catastrophic consequences. A report by the Perryman Group estimated that if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Rhode Island, the state would lose $698.0 million in economic activity, $310.0 million in gross state product, and approximately 3,780 jobs, even accounting for adequate market adjustment time.

A study released today by former leaders of the 9/11 Commission finds that “terrorism is increasingly taking on an American cast.” Warning of “a much more diverse threat,” the report urges the U.S. government to prepare for “the radicalization and recruitment of Americans to terrorist ranks.” While the report rightly warns of threats from radical Muslim extremists, law enforcement officials should also be concerned about right-wing zealots, as a 2009 Homeland Security report warned.

For instance, this past Tuesday, the FBI arrested 26-year old Christian radical Justin Carl Moose in Concord, NC for “providing information to create explosives” to “blow up a North Carolina abortion clinic.” Through his conversations with an FBI informant and his Facebook page, Moose expressed virulent “anger at abortion doctors, President Barack Obama’s health care plan, and plans to build a mosque near ground zero in New York city.” He goes on to describe himself as “the Christian counterpart to Osama bin Laden” who “has learned a lot from the muslim terrorists and have no problem using their tactics”:

Justin Carl Moose, 26, is a self-described “extremist, radical” and the “Christian counterpart of Osama bin Laden,” according to an affidavit filed by FBI agents. [...]

“Whatever you may think about me, you’re probably right,” he wrote on his Facebook page, according to the affidavit.

“Extremist, Radical, Fundamentalist…? Yep! Terrorist…? Well, I prefer the term ‘freedom Fighter.’” [...]

Status updates posted beginning in January urge violence, FBI agents said in their affidavit.

“The Death Care Bill passed last night,” he wrote when Obama’s health care plan was approved in March. “Keep your phone and rifle close and wait.”[...]

“If a mosque is built on ground zero, it will be removed. Oklahoma City style. Tim’s not the only man out there that knows how to do it,” the affidavit says he wrote in July, in a reference to Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City.[...]

FBI agents obtained search warrants and started reading his private messages. In one sent to a fellow abortion opponent, agents say Moose wrote: “I have learned a lot from the muslim terrorists and have no problem using their tactics.”

According to WCNC-TV, a yellow “don’t tread on me” flag – the anthem of the Tea Party movement – hangs over the door to Moose’s family home. Watch it here:

Moose is self-attested member of “Army of God,” an “underground network of domestic terrorists who believe that the use of violence is appropriate and accetable as a means to end abortion.” According to its manual, the group’s purpose is to “officially declare war on the entire child killing industry.” Believing that “Our Most Dread Sovereign Lord God requires” bloodshed, members “are forced to take arms against” abortion clinics in which “execution is rarely gentile [sic].”

Arrested Tuesday, Moose will appear in federal court Monday. If convicted on all counts, he faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Despite his arrest, Moose has no intention of surrending peacefully. In a post taunting the federal authorities monitoring him, he told “all the feds watching me: You can’t stop what is in motion. Even if you bring me in, my men will continue their mission. Furthermore, I will not go peacefully. Do you really want another Waco?”

Anthony Shadid and Michael Gordon report on the latest U.S. efforts to broker an Iraqi power-sharing deal that would enable the Iraqis to finally form a government almost seven months after their elections. The proposed arrangement “could retain Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as prime minister but in a coalition that would significantly curb his authority”:

American officials assert that they do not have a preferred candidate for prime minister. But the proposal is intended to make Mr. Maliki, or a strong-willed successor, more palatable to the rest of a broad-based governing coalition. The redefined authority would be codified by new legislation but would not require that the Constitution be amended. [...]

Across the spectrum, there are concerns that Mr. Maliki’s return would further strengthen the hold of his Dawa Party over the key instruments of the state — the police, the army and, perhaps most importantly, intelligence — and close off the possibility that there will ever be a peaceful transfer of power to a rival party.

Mr. Biden said in an interview in Baghdad last week that if Iraq went another six months without a new government it would raise concerns that Iraq’s military might intervene in politics. “My worry will be that generals in the military will start saying, ‘Wait a minute, which way is this going to go?’ ” he said.

Biden’s concerns are echoed by, among others, former New York Times Iraq correspondent John Burns. In an interview with Charlie Rose, he was asked “How is Iraq going to end?” Burns replied, “I have rather somber thoughts about that”:

BURNS: We all hoped, whether you supported or didn’t support the war, that America would find an exit that was honorable for America, that left behind a country — by the time of the surge they had reformulated what the objective would be. It was no longer democracy, it was a government stable enough to defend its own territory, or something to that effect. I’m not sure that that’s been achieved. And I’m rather afraid that that may be lost as the last 50,000 American troops are drawn down over this last year. And that’s not an argument for their staying, because I think, though I quite doubt that anybody cares what I think about this, I think the price for America is already too high, and it’s not really — as Ryan Crocker said, the last ambassador in my time there, he doesn’t really lose a lot of sleep over this, because the fact is America is coming home. There’s going to be no mood in America to reverse that.

ROSE: He also said that the things that would determine the future of Iraq have not yet happened.

BURNS: Well, that’s of course — if I had to place my money on this, it would be on the strongman outcome. That there is somewhere, in what we used to call the Green Zone, a half-colonel or colonel, it’s a story we’ve seen repeated many times in the Middle East, at least we did, and there will be a coup, but probably not until those last American troops have rumbled back across the border to Kuwait. And you just have to hope that if that is the outcome, the only way of ending this sectarian factionalism which is constantly threatening to tear apart the political structures that America will be leaving behind, that he’s not a psychopathic murderer like Saddam.

In addition to radically downwardly redefining “victory” in Iraq, as my colleagues Brian Katulis, Peter Juul and Marc Lynch explained in a September 2008 report, the surge “froze into place the fragmentation that Iraq underwent in 2006 and 2007 and created disincentives to bridge central divisions between Iraqi factions.” While the surge achieved important gains in reducing violence in Iraq, it failed to address the fundamental political conflicts that drove that violence, and which continue to frustrate the formation of a government and threaten to push Iraq back into the embrace of authoritarianism. I look forward to seeing Doug Feith or Dan Senor on TV explaining how this is all President Obama’s fault.