For some background on the tragedy, click over to this previous post: El Paso Border Patrol agent fires into crowd of Juarez rock throwers, kills 14 year old

Well, the first lies have already been exposed in the tragic shooting and killing of Mexican teenager Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca. Stay tuned for more to follow.

Allegedly fearing for his life and surrounded by a “crowd” (as I wrote, above) of violent rock-throwers, the agent, patrolling in the culvert that forms the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, fired in self-defense and hit the 14 15 year-old’s head. Or so they said.

“Another agent arrived on his bicycle along the cement apron that forms the riverbank on the U.S. side,” [FBI agent Andrea] Simmons said in a release. “That agent detained a second subject, Augustin Alcaraz Reyes, but other subjects ran into Mexico and began to throw rocks at the agent.

“This agent, who had the second subject detained on the ground, gave verbal commands to the remaining subjects to stop and retreat,” Simmons said. “However, the subjects surrounded the agent and continued to throw rocks at him. The agent then fired his service weapon several times, striking one subject who later died.”

A Top 10 Rule for Post-Modern Life: Don’t foist a despicable lie upon the public that tomorrow’s cell phone clip will blow out of the water.

Looks like stone cold murder to me. Unless they suddenly want to add the boy, incidentally, had a bazooka in his hands.

That’s all I want to say about this today. One, it’s just too sad. Two, this is an international scandal worthy of weeks of discussion. Three, Americans don’t give a fuck. They are a hard-hearted people when it comes to the deaths and lives of Mexicans.

It’s not enough that we back the Israelis no matter what they do — now we’re gonna borrow their tactics, too?

Wait, I take that back. The Israelis wised up long ago and learned to use rubber bullets in confrontations with rock throwers. Well . . at least some of the time. Not us, no sir. For us, teens throwing rocks across the border fence-line constitutes a “deadly force” incident. By all means, go shoot one of them in the head:

Mexico asks for probe into teen’s shooting death by U.S. border agent
By Arthur Brice, CNN
June 8, 2010 — Updated 2129 GMT (0529 HKT)

(CNN) — The Mexican government is requesting a quick and transparent investigation into the fatal shooting by a U.S. Border Patrol agent of a Mexican teen in Ciudad Juarez on Monday night, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

The teen was shot during a rock-throwing incident, Mexican and U.S. officials said.

Mexico “reiterates that the use of firearms to repel a rock attack represents a disproportionate use of force, particularly coming from authorities who receive specialized training on the matter,” the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday in a news release . .

Monday night’s incident started around 6:30 p.m. when Customs and Border Protection Border Patrol agents responded to a report of a group of suspected illegal immigrants being smuggled into the United States near the Paso del Norte port of entry, FBI Special Agent Andrea Simmons said.

A suspect identified as Oscar Ivan Pineda Ayala was initially detained on the Rio Grande levy, said the FBI, which is leading the investigation.

“Another agent arrived on his bicycle along the cement apron that forms the riverbank on the U.S. side,” Simmons said in a release. “That agent detained a second subject, Augustin Alcaraz Reyes, but other subjects ran into Mexico and began to throw rocks at the agent.

“This agent, who had the second subject detained on the ground, gave verbal commands to the remaining subjects to stop and retreat,” Simmons said. “However, the subjects surrounded the agent and continued to throw rocks at him. The agent then fired his service weapon several times, striking one subject who later died” . .

Ciudad Juarez spokesman Sergio Belmonte identified the dead 14-year-old boy as secondary student Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereca.

Belmonte said Hernandez was shot in the head.

“The young man was not armed,” Belmonte said. “He did not have the physical size to threaten anyone. The aggression (by the U.S. agent) is evident.”

Ugh. So, will Arizonans form massive support demonstrations for the brave Border Patrol agent defending himself against the violent Mexican thug? Will they go on and on about how impossible it is to routinely enforce immigration laws when the immigrants are universally angry, armed and anti-American? Will they point out that even Mexican 14 year-olds are dangerous because that’s just the way those people are, y’know, down there?

Will the Israelis go out of their way to support the right of the United States and its Border Patrol agents to defend themselves? Especially in light of the well-known dangers being constantly smuggled into lands we’re obligated to provide security for? Will they see the teen’s rock-throwing as a shallow p.r. ploy to goad American agents into violence meant to embarrass the U.S.?

Will John McCain make a series of campaign commercials highlighting the incident, calling the courageous but overburdened Border Patrol “HEROES”, similar to our Iraqi soldiers? Will he then draw up a plan for a “SURGE” down at the border in order to get our people the personnel and support they need to “win” the immigration “war”? Will he ride the mess to victory in November and return to the Senate so we can see him on teevee every Sunday morning for another million years?

I dread the fall-out from this sad thing.

Powerline:

Victory Party at the morgue. This is the official right-wing line on the massacre: it’s exactly what the pro-Gaza Turks and activists planned all along. It was a suicide mission of some sort, an effort at violent political theater meant to embarrass and shame the Israelis, and now the world is falling for it.

It’s all so simple, everybody knew exactly what was going on. The IDF spokesperson blog:

– “IDF Forces Met with Pre-Planned Violence when Attempting to Board Flotilla”

Yid with lid:

– “It was a set up. This time the flotilla organizers wanted violence and they were going to attack the IDF to make sure they go [sic] it.”

Canadian press, who were covering P.M. Netanyahu’s visit and his comments after the tragedy:

– “But B’nai Brith Canada alleged the flotilla was organized by Islamists ‘whose obvious goal was to provoke Israel into a response.’”

Let’s play this out, then. Why in the world did the commandos choose to embrace the role the ham-handed activists asked them to play? The IDF did it anyway, knowing it would probably kill some of their political enemies and hand them a great victory?

After all, the flotilla was carrying thousands of tons of relief for Gaza. And it was not running weapons and explosives to the terrorists. So . . why did the clever, violence-abhorring, super-civilized Israelis choose to do exactly as the pro-Gaza barbarians begged them? Anyone?

Is it possible the Israelis are simply losing control? They’ve developed the sort of blind self-righteousness that causes them to march into catastrophes that others would avoid?

How could anyone think that boarding a vessel holding hundreds of people who despise Israel (and their commandos) might not explode in visceral anger? Something that would guarantee the commandos using their weapons and precipitating an international crisis?

Israel’s defense of “We did it because we had the right to” doesn’t come close to washing. The use of force requires wisdom, something the far more technologically advanced Israelis seem to be using less and less of.

That technology makes it possible to blockade Gaza, a population of 1.5 million people. That equates to America’s fifth or sixth largest city: imagine Israel locking down Philadelphia or Phoenix. Then you can begin to get a feeling for the tremendous amount of anger and outrage that’s been building over the last three years. When you consider that it was enacted after Gaza chose Hamas by democratic means, it gets worse.

The truth is that the flotilla massacre wasn’t an act by Israel that defended the lives of its citizens. It was an act to defend their siege of Gaza, something they continue to unwisely pursue. It drove them to board, in international waters, a ship full of otherwise peaceable activists delivering supplies to needy people, and now many of the activists are dead.

Maybe they wanted a violent confrontation. If the Israelis have gotten so stupid, if they refuse to think any more about their actions, choosing instead to push forward just like any other over-militarized and angry state, these convenient tragedies will continue.

Nice Guys Finish Last
Noah Pollak – 05.31.2010 – 12:52 PM

To my mind, the most astonishing thing about the flotilla disaster is that the IDF sent its elite naval commandos into a highly charged potential combat situation that was being closely scrutinized by the world media — armed with paintball guns.

In addition to their lead-ball guns. Wooh, crazy.

The intent, of course, was to show that Israel wished to avert escalating the confrontation . .

. . by boarding the ship in international waters with their elite commandos. There are other ways to avoid confrontation.

. . and merely sought to bring the ships to port, transfer their cargo to Gaza, send the “peace activists” home, and bring this mini-drama to a close. But the results were catastrophic.

And why does Israel think it can dictate how people, Turks, mostly, live their lives? International waters. They ended up dictating their deaths. Israel does not retain the right to kill everybody that hates it. Israel does not retain the right to dictate how dramas in international waters unfold.

Instead of proving Israel’s good intentions, the commandos found themselves unable to take control of the terrorist blockade runners, who knew, of course, that any bloodshed and violence that followed the Israeli boarding party would be laid at the feet of the Israelis.

Especially since it was the Israelis that killed everybody. Makes you wonder if the “terrorist blockade runners” were psychic. Sure, the psychics knew it could be a p.r. disaster — so what? When you’ve got some pro-Gaza people on a boat, even armed with clubs and slingshots, they’re not ambushing anybody. When armed Israeli commandos forcibly and illegally overtake and kill these people, it’s clear where the responsibility lies. Israel has no right to kill people that could embarrass it.

Armed with the proper equipment, the naval commandos could have done precisely what they are trained to do — take command of a ship decisively and with great speed. This can only be done when the men boarding the ship are able to immediately neutralize their opponents and establish complete control.

They didn’t use enough force. How’s that for “Israel, right or wrong” politics? Never mind that they broke the law by even attempting the moronic exercise– they should have been even tougher on the activists. They should’ve boarded the ship with 10 times the commandos and immediately tied everybody up. And then they could’ve quickly found that the ship flotilla wasn’t a gun-running operation and apologized to the international community without killing anybody. Yay!

But the Israeli commandos obviously could not establish complete control. They fast-roped into an ambush and were beaten and stabbed. Would this have happened if they had real guns in their hands? Probably not.

Would there have been a massacre with not-real guns? Probably not.

Those who sent an elite unit into a hostile confrontation armed with toy weapons made an incredibly stupid decision. And a uniquely Israeli one. In recent memory, Israeli military action has been violent but not decisive, bloody enough to provoke the outrage and condemnation of the world (at this point, a stubbed toe will do), but not enough to actually change facts on the ground (the Hamas and Hezbollah wars being prime examples).

So Israel needs to steel itself as both violent and decisive. Unlike today, where they deferred the violence for a few minutes.

These halfhearted wars and battles have earned Israel demerits in world opinion without enough to show in improved strategic position. Exit question: How many new flotillas to Gaza are being planned right now in Europe, Turkey, and the Middle East?

The terrorism escalates. I fear for the nice guys.

Gaza flotilla participants created war atmosphere before confronting Israel
Participants chanted Islamic battle cry invoking killing of Jews and called for Martyrdom
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

On the day before the Gaza flotilla confronted the Israeli navy, Al-Jazeera TV documented the pre-battle atmosphere created by men on board the flotilla, who chanted a well-known Islamic battle cry invoking the killing and defeat of Jews in battle:

“[Remember] Khaibar, Khaibar, oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!”

Khaibar is the name of the last Jewish village defeated by Muhammad’s army in 628. Many Jews were killed in that battle, which marked the end of Jewish presence in Arabia. There are Muslims who see that as a precursor to future wars against Jews. At gatherings and rallies of extremists, this chant is often heard as a threat to Jews to expect to be defeated and killed again by Muslims.

Al-Jazeera also interviewed a woman who said that the flotilla participants’ goal was “one of two happy endings: either Martyrdom or reaching Gaza.”

Well, if it was a “war-like atmosphere” the day before, go ahead and kill them. Sporting that sort of attitude on a boat at sea, they get what they deserve. Especially when they’re arrogant enough to “confront . . the Israeli navy” by being overtaken and boarded.

Can’t take a righteous beating, huh?

Because anyone begging for an all-out clash with the Israeli Defense Forces brings “bats, clubs, knives, and slingshots.” So the IDF routed a flotilla of activist Boy Scouts, bravo. They sure as hell weren’t terrorists, those guys carry guns and bombs.

French in uproar over oral sex anti-smoking posters

. . A campaign to discourage young people from Smoking
shows male and female teenagers kneeling in front of a man, as if being forced to have oral sex. A cigarette takes the place of the man’s sexual organ. The caption reads: “Smoking is to be a slave to tobacco.”

The advertising agency behind the posters says only a shock campaign can halt the rise in smoking amongst 13 to 15-year-olds in France . .

Tea Party Disputes Take Toll on Convention

A Tea Party convention billed as the coming together of the grass-roots groups that began sprouting up around the country a year ago is unraveling as sponsors and participants pull out to protest its expense and express concerns about “profiteering.”…

Philip Glass, the national director of the National Precinct Alliance, announced late Sunday that “amid growing controversy” around the convention, his organization would no longer participate. His group seeks to take over the Republican Party from the bottom by filling the ranks of local and state parties with grass-roots conservatives, and Mr. Glass had been scheduled to lead workshops on its strategy.

“We are very concerned about the appearance of T.P.N. profiteering and exploitation of the grass-roots movement,” he said in a statement. “We were under the impression that T.P.N. was a nonprofit organization like N.P.A., interested only in uniting and educating Tea Party activists on how to make a real difference in the political arena.”…

“When we look at the $500 price tag for the event and the fact that many of the original leaders in the group left over similar issues, it’s hard for us not to assume the worst,” Eric Odom, the executive director of the American Liberty Alliance and an organizer of the tax day rallies last April, wrote on the group’s Web site.

Sherry Phillips, who founded and runs Tea Party Nation with her husband, Judson, said Monday that it was a nonprofit group.

That would be a flat-out lie.

She declined to comment on Ms. Palin’s speaking fee.

“If there is any profit,” Ms. Phillips said, “the money will go toward furthering the cause of conservatism.”

It’s one of those profiting ‘non-profits’?

200,000 dead and counting, can’t believe I’ve typed that for the fourth or fifth time.

It’s beginning to look like one of the most savage, shocking disasters in all of history. A rival to the Indian Hurricane of 1839 and the Antioch Earthquake of 526.

How well did Glenn Beck ‘pundit’ reality?

Grassroots activists or sheep to the slaughter? No one seems to know for sure, and only a few more seem to care.

So thoroughly cowed by corporate interests are right-wingers that they might just think it’s a good thing, volunteering their time and giving their hard-earned pay and pensions to greedy people so that they can buy houses and cars with it. America!

I posted earlier on the ‘Tea Party Express’: a group who collected over a million dollars worth of teabaggers’ money only to hand two-thirds of it to the Republican consulting firm — Russo, Marsh and Associates — that created it.

That created howls of protest from the ‘Tea Party Patriots’. But, earlier, the TPPs were wrenched by their own factious squabbling after criticism over their fiscal goings-on.

“Why are the financial records not public knowledge?” [Merits] asked. “Show me the money!”

Eventually a Tea Party Patriots loyalist couldn’t take it anymore. “Why are you intentionally trying to destroy this movement??” he demanded.

And so it continues. Conservative blogger Melissa Clouthier has an expose on the ‘hot’ tea party organization, ‘Tea Party Nation’. They’re the ones who scored Sarah Palin giving the keynote address at their February 4-6 convention.

She blew off the larger, far more prestigious Conservative Political Action Committee meeting in favor of the ‘Tea Party Nation’ convention, giving the movement some cache. All it cost TPN were Palin’s fee and expenses, around $125,000. Apparently, the venerated CPAC doesn’t operate by paying its speakers six-figure sums.

But the coup did excite the TPN people. Their scheduled venue, the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, was too small for a Palin sighting. We should move it, right?

Well, these decisions come down to only person. Because it turns out the ‘Tea Party Nation’ is Tea Party Nation, INC., a company with a single owner. And Judson Phillips wasn’t having any of that ‘move it’ talk, he had bigger plans.

Excited organizers found out October 22 that Sarah Palin had chosen to speak to the party. During the meeting, local activists urged Phillips to change the venue so more people could attend as the space was so limited at Opryland. At that point in November, he had 60 days to change the venue but was afraid if he changed it, Palin wouldn’t come speak to the gathering, says one person familiar with the meeting.

When Judson Phillips suggested the $550 convention fee, some members were so aghast they got up and left the meeting.

At one point, fisticuffs nearly broke out, emotions ran so high. Those who had been in the bottom-up organization felt betrayed because the event excluded so many average people and many of the volunteers themselves couldn’t even afford to attend. Philips and his few supporters saw an opportunity to make money.

This meeting prompted many long-time Tea Party members to quit…

The decision was made to keep the conference, small, expensive and exclusive.

Phillips’ intentions were abundantly clear to the people familiar with TPN:

Tami Killmarx said that she heard Phillips say more than once, “I want to make a million from this movement.”

Killmarx wasn’t the only volunteer who suspected Phillips intentions were to gain personally. Jerry Williams who ran security for the Tea Party Nation gatherings from the groups inception until August when he resigned, and was slated to handle security at the February 2010 convention, said, “We have a situation that’s like a natural disaster. [Likening the American political climate to a disaster.] You’ve always got people out there who want to make a buck on it. This is the same thing. There’s people out there who want to jump on this Tea Party thing for their own interests. They’re not really worried about the country or the people.”

Phillips fired Killmarx. And some others. Virtually anybody who questions Phillips and his motives gets the axe. One firing:

Due to the events of last Saturday and your indiscretion in relation to the National Tea Party Convention, it is apparent that your loyalties and interests are not compatible with those of Tea Party Nation. It is for this reason I am requesting your resignation from the TPN Advisory Board. I will give you 24 hours to remove yourself from the group before I remove it myself.

Continue Reading »

Harry Reid is an idiot. Pretty much everybody knows it.

Reid has moved quickly to show contrition after a new book, “Game Change” by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin revealed that he made comments in 2008 suggesting that Barack Obama could be elected president because he is “light skinned” and lacks “Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

I have no idea why he’s in a leadership position, the guy is strange and utterly dis-likable. But that was just a stupid comment about the now President, and he doesn’t particularly care.

“Harry Reid called me today and apologized for an unfortunate comment reported today,” Obama said in a statement released on Saturday. “I accepted Harry’s apology without question because I’ve known him for years, I’ve seen the passionate leadership he’s shown on issues of social justice and I know what’s in his heart. As far as I am concerned, the book is closed.”

But who gives a damn about the guy who was the object of the comment? Who the hell said he’s got any say in this controversy? Republicans are still pissed that Trent Lott had to resign for statements that he made.

In an interview with POLITICO, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) said it would be “entirely appropriate” for the Nevada Democrat to relinquish his leadership post over comments about Barack Obama’s skin color and lack of a “Negro dialect.”…

“There’s a big double standard here,” [Michael] Steele said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”…

Still, Steele said: “There has to be a consequence here if the standard is the one set in 2002 with Trent Lott.”

[Jon] Kyl (Ariz.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, echoed Steele’s complaints about a “double standard” for Democrats.

“I agree with Michael Steele’s comments that there is a double standard,” Kyl said on Fox News Sunday.”

“If [Lott] should resign, then Harry Reid should. If they apologize and you know what is in their heart, my feeling is they shouldn’t. But in this case, [Reid] should.”

In other words, we don’t give a damn what black people, or the “light skinned” President, think, you guys owe us one. It’s apparently a game.

In 1948, South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond ran for President as candidate for a shocking splinter party, the Dixiecrats, who vowed to defend racist segregation.

During the campaign, he said, “All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches.”

Thurmond’s party ran under a platform that declared in part, “We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race.”

And over a half century later, this is what Trent Lott proudly averred:

“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either . . .”

In other words, “Our segregationist ways would have lead America to a better place.” A ringing endorsement of violent racism. Republicans are idiots for trying to play this game, there’s no upside here. Do you think they remember that the President’s black?

This is a horrible story — a woman in Virginia gave birth to a child, then cold-bloodedly smothered it in blankets before calling 911. Ten hours later.

Around eleven Friday morning the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office got a call that a woman in her early 20′s was in labor. When deputies arrived at a home in the 12 hundred block of Lone Jack Road in Rustburg they discovered the baby had actually been born alive ten hours earlier, but was dead by the time they were called out there.

“I believe everyone was upset, except for the person who should have been upset, the mother” said Investigator Tracy Emerson.

Emerson says that’s because the mother suffocated the child under bedding. He can’t charge the mother, because of a loophole in state law.

This happened two weeks ago, and still it gets no notice by the national press. You could understand if it were only the godless liberal MSM, but even the values-oriented Fox News seems to have no interest in a story that looks like it should fire up their demographic of prudes and scolds far more than Kathy Griffin saying “fuck” on CNN.

I wouldn’t even be aware of this horror story if it weren’t burning up the tubes among the Christian Right, and I can’t understand why it isn’t getting any traction. There is enough juicy moral outrage to make Jerry Falwell come back from the dead:

“In the state of Virginia as long as the umbilical cord is attached and the placenta is still in the mother, if the baby comes out alive the mother can do whatever she wants to with that baby to kill it,” said Investigator Tracy Emerson. “She could shoot the baby, stab the baby. As long as it’s still attached to her in some form by umbilical cord or something it’s no crime in the state of Virginia.”

But nobody cares about this wasted life:

If there were any way to charge this mother and put her in jail, investigators say they would. In fact, they work (sic) to try to get the state law changed after another similar incident in Campbell County. Talking to two delegates and one state senator, asking them to take this issue up with the General Assembly, but they say those three refused because it’s too close to the abortion issue.

Which is odd, seeing as how Virginia politicians normally seem to see little downside to pro-life electioneering. That’s even odder than a sheriff’s investigator acting as judge and jury to acquit a nameless and faceless murderer while making political accusations against the laws and lawmakers he’s on-duty working for.

“Simply because the mother was there, and the baby had not taken its own identity allegedly at this point, it makes the baby not its own person,” Emerson said.

According to a law – not according to Emerson who believes the little life deserves justice.

He believes the innocent babe deserves justice, but doesn’t bother to mention the killer’s name, much less bother to arrest her and everyone else in the house? In a state that six months ago won an appeals court battle to ban a legitimate medical procedure?

Virginia Abortion Restriction Is Upheld
U.S. Appeals Court Votes 6-5 to Back ‘Partial Birth’ Ban
Thursday, June 25, 2009

A sharply divided federal appeals court ruled constitutional yesterday a Virginia law banning “partial birth” abortion that was overturned four years ago, bringing the state in line with a federal ban on the controversial procedure.

Why don’t any of these low-lifes have names? As I said at the beginning, this is a truly horrible story, and I can’t understand the lack of interest in it by anyone but forced pregnancy networkers. I don’t pretend to have any journalistic training, but it seems obvious to me there is a story worth telling here. Does anybody have a rational explanation for why that isn’t happening?

No wonder it’s taking over the Republican Party, it’s populated with the same narcissists. Glory seekers, political opportunists, greed merchants and the like. Welcome to ‘reform’, right-wing style:

Majority Of Tea Party Group’s Spending Went To GOP Firm That Created It
Zachary Roth | December 28, 2009, 6:15PM

The political action committee behind the Tea Party Express (TPE) — which already has been slammed as inauthentic and corporate-controlled by rival factions in the Tea Party movement — directed almost two thirds of its spending during a recent reporting period back to the Republican consulting firm that created the PAC in the first place.

Our Country Deserves Better (OCDB) spent around $1.33 million from July through November, according to FEC filings examined by TPMmuckraker. Of that sum, a total of $857,122 went to Sacramento-based GOP political consulting firm Russo, Marsh, and Associates, or people associated with it…

…one expert on political action committees told TPMmuckraker it was unusual for a PAC to direct so much spending back to the entity that created it. And the spending details raised hackles among members of the Tea Party Patriots, a rival faction of conservative activists who have denounced TPE as a creature of Republican political professionals that lacks grassroots authenticity. In an email to a Patriots group that was obtained by TPMmuckaker, one TPPer who had examined the filings asked, “What would the true grassroots people think if they knew their money is being spent in this manner?”

..earlier…

Party Foul! Tea Partiers Eat Their Own In Bitter Internal Feud
Zachary Roth | November 12, 2009, 5:08PM

…”How much money does TPP have? How much did we make in DC? Where are the financial statements? Do board members get paid and if so who? Who signs the checks? Where does our money go?”

Merits echoed that theme. “Why are the financial records not public knowledge?” he asked. “Show me the money!”

Eventually a Tea Party Patriots loyalist couldn’t take it anymore. “Why are you intentionally trying to destroy this movement??” he demanded.

Charges of lax book-keeping — and worse — appear to be breaking out across the Tea Party movement. In a separate email written Wednesday and obtained by TPMmuckraker, Matt Perdue, the president of a San Antonio Tea Party group, ripped into the group’s treasurer, her husband, and their supporters for conducting a “mass redirection campaign,” apparently to line their own pockets using Tea Party donations.

“Where has all this money gone?” asks Perdue. “If there is nothing wrong going on, why has there not been one single piece of paper produced to back up why people got checks, some for $3,000, $7,400+, $4,000, $10,400+??? Where is the documentation? Why isn’t the cash deposited like it should be? Why did it take more than two weeks to deposit cash from the meetings?”…

Some TPPers expressed concern that the acrimony could damage the movement if exposed. “Daily Kos and other left wing interest groups are going to love running with this story,” wrote one.

Merits appeared to share that concern. “This will go public if we let it drag on long enough and if you don’t think this will have a chilling effect on all Tea Party movements raising funds you are living in a world of fairy dust and gingerbread houses,” he wrote. “Read my previous emails. If this goes on long enough, we all go down – NOT just TPP and TPE – ALL OF US.”

Thanks to Zachary Roth and TPMMuckraker.