Thread: FBI Dumps Southern Poverty Law Center as Hate Crimes Resource

FBI Dumps Southern Poverty Law Center as Hate Crimes Resource

Christian groups are celebrating with the news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation appears to have scrubbed the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) from its hate crimes webpage, where the controversial group was listed as a resource and referred to as a partner in public outreach.


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http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...rty-Law-Center

FBI DUMPS SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER AS HATE CRIMES RESOURCE



by AUSTIN RUSE 26 Mar 2014, 6:45 PM PDT

Christian groups are celebrating with the news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation appears to have scrubbed the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) from its hate crimes webpage, where the controversial group was listed as a resource and referred to as a partner in public outreach.

A letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, drafted by Lieutenant General (Ret.) William G. Boykin, Executive Vice President of the Family Research Council (FRC), calls such an association "completely unacceptable."

Signed by fourteen other conservative and Christian leaders, the letter calls SPLC "a heavily politicized organization producing inaccurate and biased data on 'hate groups' – not hate crimes." It accuses the SPLC of "providing findings that are not consistent with trends found in the FBI statistics." Where the FBI has found hate crimes and hate groups declining significantly in the past ten years, SPLC claims hate groups have increased 67.3% since 2000. Where once SPLC's hate list was reserved for groups like the Aryan Nation and the KKK, in 2010 SPLC started citing as hate groups those Christian groups that oppose same-sex marriage or believe homosexuality is not inborn, or are otherwise critical of homosexuality. Among the Christian groups targeted by SPLC was FRC.

In the fall of 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins, armed with a loaded semi-automatic pistol and 100 rounds of ammunition, entered FRC headquarters not far from FBI headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C. Corkins shot the front desk security guard and tried to gain entrance to the upper floors where he intended to kill FRC employees. Though wounded, the front desk security guard subdued Corkins, who became the first person ever convicted under the Washington, D.C., domestic terrorism law. Corkins said he got the idea of killing FRC employees from reading the SPLC hate list and made use of a map of the FRC office found on the SPLC website.

The Boykin letter concludes that "it is completely inappropriate for the Department of Justice to recommend public reliance on the SPLC hate group lists and data." The letter demanded that all ties between the FBI and SPLC be severed.

SPLC has come under severe criticism from the left and the right in recent years.

Writing in the left-wing website Counterpunch, Alexander Coburn called SPLC founder Morris Dees "king of the hate business." Coburn wrote, "Ever since 1971, U.S. Postal Service mailbags have bulged with Dees' fundraising letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his lurid depictions of hate-sodden America, in dire need of legal confrontation by the SPLC." In fact, so prolific is Dees at direct mail that he is in the Direct Marketing Association Hall of Fame.

Writing at the Harper's Magazine blog in 2007, Ken Silverstein said, "What [the SPLC] does best... is to raise obscene amounts of money by hyping fears about the power of [right-wing fringe] groups; hence the SPLC has become the nation's richest 'civil rights' organization."

A critical analysis published recently by Professor George Yancey of North Texas University concluded that SPLC targets only those groups its leaders disagree with politically while leaving liberal groups who use extreme language alone.

A 2013 article in Foreign Policy concluded that SPLC exaggerates the hate crimes threat, saying SPLC is not an "objective purveyor of data," instead calling them "anti-hate activists" and suggesting that their reports need to be "weighed more carefully by news outlets that cover their pronouncements."

Though SPLC sits on a bank account of $250 million and raises some $40 million a year in direct mail, some have suggested that the decline of racist groups and therefore the need to tap new sources of funds might have led Dees and his colleagues to target Christian groups as new sources of revenue. Weekly Standard writer Charlotte Hays says, "...several critics with whom I spoke speculated that the last might represent another of Dees's efforts to tap via mailing lists into a well-off and easily frightened donor base: gays."

What has concerned Christian groups in recent years is that their inclusion on the hate list and the use of the hate list by the FBI is unfair and even dangerous to their civil liberties. After all, holding the view that gayness is not inborn and opposing same-sex marriage are hardly against the law.

FRC president Tony Perkins said, "We commend the FBI for removing website links to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that not only dispenses erroneous data but has been linked to domestic terrorism in federal court. We hope this means the FBI leadership will avoid any kind of partnership with the SPLC."

Read Boykin's letter to the FBI below:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...rty-Law-Center

http://www.alipac.us/f9/anti-hate-gr...ed-fbi-299849/

WASHINGTON SECRETS

'Shocked' Anti-Defamation League slaps FBI 'diss on hate crimes

BY PAUL BEDARD | MARCH 26, 2014 AT 5:39 PM



Before the abrupt scrubbing, the FBI hate crime webpage included two outside groups as "resources."The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has labeled several Washington, D.C.-based family organizations as "hate groups" for favoring traditional marriage, has been dumped as a "resource" on theFBI's Hate Crime Web page, a significant rejection of the influential legal group.

The Web page scrubbing, which also included eliminating the Anti-Defamation League, was not announced and came in the last month after 15 family groups pressed Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director James Comey to stop endorsing a group -- SPLC -- that inspired a recent case of domestic terrorism at the Family Research Council.

"We commend the FBI for removing website links to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that not only dispenses erroneous data but has been linked to domestic terrorism in federal court. We hope this means the FBI leadership will avoid any kind of partnership with the SPLC,” Tony Perkins, FRC President, told Secrets.

“The Southern Poverty Law Center's mission to push anti-Christian propaganda is inconsistent with the mission of both the military and the FBI, which is to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States,” he added.

The Anti-Defamation League, however, was "shocked" by the FBI's move, made without any notice. It's work with the FBI has not been questioned.

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told Secrets, “We are shocked, surprised and disappointed that this would be done without any consultation with groups such as ours who have been working closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on issues of hate crime. We look forward to having further conversations with them on this issue.”

The FBI had no comment and offered no explanation for its decision to end their website's relationship with the two groups, leaving just four federal links as hate crime “resources.” The SPLC had no comment.

SPLC has been a leading voice against hate crimes, and has singled out evangelical and traditional family groups as advocates of hate against gays. It has even gone after a local official, Loudoun County Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, who also heads a group that promotes traditional, opposite sex marriage.

In August 2012, a Washington area man guided by the SPLC's "hate map" that cited FRC, entered the group's headquarters and shot a security guard. The guard survived and the shooter, a volunteer with a gay group, pleaded guilty to domestic terrorism.

In their letter, the 15 conservative groups argued that the FBI website's inclusion of SPLC as a resource "played a significant part in bringing about an act of domestic terrorism." It added, "It is completely inappropriate for the Department of Justice to recommend public reliance on the SPLC hate group lists and data. The links to the SPLC as a FBI ‘Resource’ must be taken down immediately, leaving only official, trustworthy sources listed on the agency’s webpage."

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted atpbedard@washingtonexaminer.com.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/shocke...rticle/2546305

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