Crickets...All We Hear Is Crickets.

From NBCNews:

Clues on a possible motive for an armed assault at Los Angeles International Airport emerged Saturday, with reports that the suspect was carrying a “manifesto” associated with the antigovernment “patriot” movement and a note saying he intended to murder at least one Transportation Security Administration officer.

The Associated Press, quoting a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation, reported that suspect Paul Anthony Ciancia, 23, said in the note found in the duffel bag he carried into the airport on Friday that he wasn’t targeting a specific TSA employee.

Here's what the AP had to say, specifically, about the note:

The letter in his duffel bag refers to how Ciancia believed his constitutional rights were being violated by TSA searches and that he's a "pissed-off patriot" upset at former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

"Black, white, yellow, brown, I don't discriminate," the note read, according to a paraphrase by a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

The screed also mentioned "fiat currency" and "NWO," possible references to the New World Order, a conspiracy theory that foresees a totalitarian one-world government.

And some possible context from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Ciancia’s language and references seemed to put him squarely in the conspiracy-minded world of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement. The New World Order refers to a longstanding conspiracy theory that today, in its most popular iteration, claims that global elites are plotting to form a socialistic “one-world government” that would crush American freedoms. Often, the root of the alleged conspiracy is traced to the 1913 creation of the Federal Reserve and the adoption of fiat currency — paper money that is not backed by gold, as it was once was in the U.S.

Now, let's play a game.

What if, say, instead of going by "Paul Ciancia" the shooter's name was "Mohammad ANYTHING."  Now imagine if in his duffel bag there was a Koran and a note protesting any number of US guv'ment actions (Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, drone strikes, you get the picture).

How soon would the rightwing media have pounced on this aspect of the story?  How soon would they be calling for enhanced scrutiny of the nation's Islamic communities?

Instead, because it looks at this point like just another well-armed anti-guv'ment "patriot" acting out on his right-wing conspiracy theories, we get something else entirely.

How Easy Was This?

From today's Tribune-Review Op-Ed page:

Few takers and negligible economic benefits should lead Congress to end the EB-5 program, which essentially sells visas to foreign investors otherwise unable to legally enter the United States.

That's what David North, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies (cis.org), concludes in his study of the program.

Ah...the CIS.

Remember them?  This is what the Southern Poverty Law Center has to say about the CIS:

To make its case seem as strong as possible, CIS often manipulates data, relying on shaky statistics or faulty logic to come to the preordained conclusion that immigration is bad for this country. But CIS studies have been regularly debunked by mainstream academics and think tanks including the Immigration Policy Center, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and America's Voice.

In this case, they simply misrepresent the facts (at best).