News fairly unbalanced. We report. You decipher
After the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sparked a firestorm of protest from right-wing extremists over a nine-page report on the “resurgence in radicalization and recruitment” among right-wing extremist groups, DHS chief Janet Napolitano announced today that her department would soon release a similar report on leftist groups via Twitter.
The ‘Rightwing Extremism’ report warned that the current economic crisis, and the election of a black president, could inspire returning war veterans and others to join violent groups plotting against their own nation.
Twitter, a social networking site, allows users to post messages — called tweets — of up to 140 characters, including spaces, punctuation and misspellings.
Napolitano said the Obama administration always seeks balance, but explained that “given the relative dearth of left-wing extremism in the U.S., we figure we’ll be able to post an in-depth analysis tweet, and still have characters to spare.”
“I think it’s fair to say that, for all practical purposes, there really are no left-wing extremists,” said Napolitano. “Every time we get a report on a such a group, and we investigate, we find that they’re just regular folks who believe the same things that I do, that the president does…Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi…these people are right down the middle.”
The Homeland Security Secretary said the report to be issued on Twitter would be called “Mainstreamists: Just Going with the Flow.”
Meanwhile, Napolitano said she would meet with veterans to apologize for what many saw as a disparaging characterization in the report on right-wing extremists.
“I would say that I’m sorry if some of our deeply-troubled war vets misunderstood our report because of their limited education,” Ms. Napolitano said. “After all, they joined the military because they had no other options. We at Homeland Security should be sensitive to folks who didn’t have the benefit of a liberal arts education, or the kind of wisdom that comes from high-level policy meetings in Washington D.C..”
Examiner Columnist Scott Ott is editor-in-chief of ScrappleFace.com, the world’s leading family-friendly news satire source.
