Friday, November 25, 2011

Error in Daily Caller article

(Note: The Daily Caller corrected the article the same day. -MV)

A new profile of ACORN founder Wade Rathke in the Daily Caller inaccurately describes a key passage in my book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers (published by WND Books).

Here's the offending paragraph from the Daily Caller:
His book opens with the provocative question, “How many dead Republicans does it take to satisfy the bloodlust of ACORN founder Wade Rathke?” referring to his contention that ACORN leaders planned “to kill delegates and police” at the 2008 Republican national Convention in Minnesota, before a turncoat helped law-enforcement dismantle the plot.
In fact I did not write in my book that ACORN leaders planned to kill delegates and police at the 2008 Republican national convention. The book makes it clear that anarchists Bradley Neil Crowder and David Guy McKay plotted to bomb the Republican convention. Crowder and McKay went to prison for their crimes. I have never claimed that Crowder and McKay were in any way associated with ACORN. (Actually, I wrote about Crowder and McKay in a Daily Caller article published January 13, 2010.)

Rathke had nothing to do with the bomb plot. He did, however, express disgust that a fellow community organizer had foiled the plot by alerting the FBI.

Here is the relevant passage from the book:

How many dead Republicans does it take to satisfy the bloodlust of ACORN founder Wade Rathke?
 We’ll never know, because the FBI thwarted the attack planned by his allies on the 2008 Republican national convention. It’s impossible to determine how many American lives were saved that September day in St. Paul, Minnesota, because Rathke’s progressive comrades-in arms were caught before they could incinerate innocent Americans who disagreed with them politically.
 This attempt by radical left-wing anarchists to kill delegates and police and to shut down the nation’s democratic process didn’t enrage Rathke, chief architect of President Barack Obama’s favorite community organizing group. On the contrary, five months later Rathke wrote a blog post without a single word of criticism for the perpetrators.
 The planned murder and mayhem didn’t interest him at all. What really drove ACORN’s patriarch nuts was that a fellow radical leftist, a member of his own political camp, had dared to work with the government to fight left-wing thuggery. On his Chief Organizer blog, Rathke denounced FBI informant Brandon Darby, formerly a fellow America-hating radical community organizer, for helping to disrupt the attack: “It seemed so, how should I say it, ’60s?”
“One thing to disagree, but it’s a whole different thing to rat on folks, or, even worse, as some now allege, to try and mousetrap people,” Rathke wrote. “Why in the age of Bush did we need to go back to the 60’s and the Darth Vader times again?” Rathke continued, nostalgically gazing into his navel. “I’m not sure exactly what may have happened. Darby is suddenly not talking, but this is all both sketchy and creepy, and I want there to be different rules of engagement in the Age of Obama.” (The entire blog post is available in Appendix C.)
Human life, pain and suffering, the possibility of civil disorder, the sanctity of the American electoral process—all were less important to Rathke than protecting terrorists who shared his vision for America. Rathke must also have been incensed that the attack came so soon after the Democrats’ national convention, which had highlighted community organizers and what they do to the communities they target. And it must have made his blood boil that the terrorist attack failed at a Republican convention whose star attractions subjected his chosen profession to pitiless ridicule.
I trust the Daily Caller will promptly correct the error.

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