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A 17-year-old student in Alabama was arrested last week for allegedly plotting to use dozens of homemade grenades to kill at least fellow six students and a teacher at Russell County High School.

Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor on Sunday said that Derek Shrout had been arrested after a teacher turned over a journal which indicated that his homemade grenades were just "a step or two away from being ready to explode," according to the Ledger-Enquirer.

A Friday search of Shrout's home turned up bomb-making materials, including dozens of tobacco cans and two large cans filled with pellets to be used as shrapnel. The two large cans were labeled "Fat Boy" and "Little Man," a reference to the atomic bombs that the U.S. dropped on Japan during World War II.

Reports indicated that the 17-year-old student, who was part of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC), had gotten mixed up with a white supremacist group after moving from Kansas to Fort Benning with his military family.

"At first through JROTC, he was confident, well-rounded, but as time went by, he was doing the whole white power thing," senior class president David Kelly told WTVM.

JROTC 1st Sgt. David White recalled that Shrout was often seen giving Nazi salutes while at school.

"In the hallway, at breakfast, at the lunch tables, after school where we have our bus parking lot, he'd have his big old group of friends and they'd go around doing the whole white power crazy stuff," White said.

"Why would you want to go to a school and blow it up? You know you're going to hit somebody else; you're not just going to, in particular, hit one person. You're going to injure more than one."

ABC News reported on Monday that Shrout's targets included five African-American students, one student who he believed was gay and one African-American teacher. Police believed that he learned to make explosives by searching the Internet.

For his part, Shrout told police that his journal was simply a work of fiction. He is being held in the Russell County Jail and is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday on charges of attempted assault.

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Fundamentalist Christian radio host Bryan Fischer says that the white supremacist who massacred six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin must have been a liberal because he hated former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain and had a "a left-wing political philosophy."

On his Tuesday American Family Association radio show, Fisher said that Wade Michael Page could not be connected to the tea party because he had threatened to leave the country if Cain was elected president. But the conservative radio host failed to mention that Page's hate for African Americans may have trumped any desire to support the Republican candidate.

"The tea party [is] primarily made up of white people, of evangelicals, people of faith," Fischer explained. "We loved Herman Cain. He was a black guy. We loved him. We would have been happy to have him be our presidential candidate. This guy despised Herman Cain."

Fischer then made the claim that Page's identification as a neo-Nazi meant he also must have been a liberal.

"You know what the Nazi Party stands for? It's the National Socialist Party. What about the word 'socialist' do you not understand? They were the National Socialist Party - that is a left-wing political philosophy," he insisted.

Fischer continued: "And you think even here in the United States, who was the part of racism? It was the left, it was liberals who were the part of racism. It was Democrats that supported and defended the institution of slavery. It was Democrats that resisted the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. It was Democrats that instituted Jim Crow laws. It was Democrats that created the Ku Klux Klan. It was Democrats that filibustered the Civil Rights Acts of the mid-1960s."

While Fischer often recounts the Democratic Party's opposition to rights for minorities, he always fails to mention that Democrats surpassed Republicans on civil rights when Democratic President Harry Truman became the first president since Abraham Lincoln to address civil rights issues in the 1940s. After attempting to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Southern Democrats have largely joined the national party in support of civil rights issues. Many of those that didn't agree with the party's civil rights agenda, defected to the Republican Party.

Earlier this week, televangelist Pat Robertson also attempted to disassociate Page with conservative Christians by suggesting that atheists were to blame for the shooting.

“What is it?” the TV preacher wondered. “Is it satanic? Is it some spiritual thing, people who are atheists, they hate God, they hate the expression of God? And they are angry with the world, angry with themselves, angry with society and they take it out on innocent people who are worshiping God.”

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)

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Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano is insisting that it was "not domestic terrorism" for a white supremacist to shoot seven people dead at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, but a Muslim U.S. Army major killing 13 coworkers at Ft. Hood was.

Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday that the FBI was investigating Wade Michael Page's deadly rampage at the Wisconsin Sikh temple as possible domestic terrorism. The FBI defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives."

"The legal definition of terrorism is two or more acts of violence intended to change the policy of the government, by scaring the population or by scaring the government," Napolitano told the hosts of Fox & Friends on Tuesday. "That does not appear to be what happened in this case."

"Page appears to be -- appears, he's dead -- appears to have been a disgruntled nut job who hated Muslims, didn't know the difference between Sikhs and Muslims and thought by killing the Sikhs he was somehow going to eliminate the Muslim population. It is an absurd, tortured way of thinking but it is not an act of domestic terrorism."

He continued: "On the other hand, the Ft. Hood shooter [Nidal Malik Hasan] who killed military in the place where they worked while damning and condemning the behavior of the government -- the employer of the people that he killed -- the government refuses to call that an act of domestic terrorism."

"While hailing Allah," Fox News co-host Brian Kilmeade noted.

"If that's not a case of terrorism then nothing is a case of terrorism," Napolitano agreed. "I think that what's playing here is politics. I think that there's a political ramification to calling something terrorism. It scares people. We look at it more closely. But if you call something 'workplace violence,' as horrific as it is, it doesn't scare us as much as it does with the word 'terrorist.'"

(h/t: Mediaite)

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On this Friday's Real Time, Bill Maher highlighted another segment with his "Real Time reporter" Alexandra Pelosi, this time focusing on the media and their hyping of a potential race war in Sanford, Florida, because all of about the three members or so of the New Black Panther Party and a handful or so of Neo-Nazis decided to show up in town.

It was nice to see someone point out just how overblown the coverage on either has been, but it's too bad Maher did not also point out the fact that Fox has been flogging the New Black Panthers as though they're a group to take seriously and fearmongering over them for a lot longer than just this story. They've been hyping this tiny group for a lot longer than just their coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting. I would hope he continues to go after them for their overblown coverage of that small fringe group and points that out in the future to his audience as well.

I'll settle for the him pointing out how horrid it is that the media looked like they were praying for a race war when it's fairly obvious there was not going to be one, so they'd have some ambulances to chase for now since sadly, he's one of the few I've seen doing it since this case finally got some national media attention.

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Apparently CNN and the producers of AC360 and Rick's List believe that nativist angry white men who have ties to hate groups and white supremacists just don't get enough airtime on their network. They also don't seem to feel the need to explain to their viewers what their background is either. I already posted Rick Sanchez's segment with FAIR's Dan Stein. Now we get treated to AZ Sen. Russell Pearce debating civil rights activist Al Sharpton on AC 360. I guess David Duke wasn't available so they had to settle for Pearce instead.

Dave Neiwert has more on Pearce here,

Profiling Arizona legislator Russell Pearce: Author of immigration law is pals with noted neo-Nazi

...and here,

A little local fascism

...and here

Arizona's immigration battle becomes a major nexus for white supremacists and the 'mainstream'.

I guess CNN can't leave all of the fear mongering and race-baiting to ClusterFox. A little clarity on their guests' backgrounds would be appreciated instead of them pretending like these people are in the mainstream.

COOPER: Senator Pearce, this is your law. It's now been struck down. At least the key portions, or maybe the most controversial portions have been blocked, I should say, not struck down, just blocked, by a federal judge, who said that enacting some of those provisions would cause what she said was irreparable harm to the United States.

What do you make of that?

RUSSELL PEARCE (R), ARIZONA STATE SENATOR: Well, she goes farther than that. She's actually tried to support the Obama administration policy of nonenforcement.

She -- she realizes the problem is bad and says, I don't want that to go into place, the policy, not law. She doesn't want it to go into place because she's afraid it will overwhelm the ICE. That's really outrageous.

The nice thing is, you need to understand, the important part of this bill did go into effect. As of today, it is illegal in the state of Arizona to have a sanctuary policy. The handcuffs come off from law enforcement and they go on the bad guys.

COOPER: Reverend Sharpton, the piece of this which has attracted a lot of attention around the country is the idea of police officers stopping people, being required to ask them for their papers if -- if they have -- are suspected of committing some form of crime.

So, to play devil's advocate here, if police officers are only allowed to question someone's immigration status after they have stopped them for another offense, what's so wrong with that, in your mind?

AL SHARPTON, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: Because the -- what is wrong with it is that you have to have a set of laws that go for everyone.

When I was in Arizona at the request of a lot of the people in our organization that lived there, the real fear is that, when you are stopped and you may look Hispanic, you will be subjected to a different line of questioning and procedure than if you didn't. And that is profiling.

And I think that just we have that possibility, which was addressed by this judge, is a violation of people's civil rights that are legal citizens that may appear a certain way.

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I guess Rick Sanchez thinks those with ties to white supremacists groups like FAIR are "respectable". Maybe someone should ask him to talk to Rachel Maddow first about what type of questions he should be asking and how you should be portraying Dan Stein if he doesn't want to make himself look like he's trying to put a smiley face on this man's extremism.

Rachel Maddow treated this man in the manner he deserved on her show and followed up with this segment fact checking his complaints about the interview.

As I pointed out in the Maddow post, FAIR has been listed as a hate group by the SPLC and rightfully so.

Answering Our Critics: SPLC ‘Smear’ Dissected:

FAIR, an organization that has been dominated for much of its life by its racist founder John Tanton, has probably done more to inject fear and bigotry into the national immigration debate than any other modern organization. Its demonizing propaganda, aimed primarily at Latinos, comes at a time when the number of hate groups continues a decade-long rise, fueled by anti-Latino hatred. At the same time, the FBI reported a 40% rise in anti-Latino hate crimes between 2003 and 2007. Those crimes decreased slightly in 2008, the latest year for which statistics are available.

What follows is a list of factors that resulted in the listing of FAIR as a hate group. More detailed information on FAIR and its founder may be found here and here. Read on...

Why someone of Latino background like Sanchez would like to give this extremist some cover is beyond me, but his show is always pretty much milk toast even when he pretends like he's going to get tough with a guest, so there's not much of a surprise here with this pathetic interview which is just pretty well business as usual for him.

SANCHEZ: All right. You heard Darrell Issa and I having this conversation a little while ago. This is an important conversation, because it's circular and it keeps going back to the very same place. And it seems silly at times. But there are people who, now, are serious-minded enough to try and come up with some kind of -- some kind of cooperative system that creates an immigration legislation for the United States.

However, and this is very important, can he find that cooperation from others? And I want to introduce you to somebody now. It's a lot harder to do what Darrell Issa was saying he wants to do when you try -- when you have to try and convince some of those on the anti- immigration front. Folks like FAIR who are very respectable in their opinion but they're very, very strident in their opinion about this.

So, I want you to hear now from that side of the story. Here's Dan Stein. He's the leader of this group.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEIN: The basic problem, Rick, is that, you know, you're hung up on this amnesty concept. Do you think the amnesty issue is what's preventing progress at the federal level?

SANCHEZ: Yes.

STEIN: That's not the case. Clearly, everybody on our side opposes amnesty.

The issue here --

SANCHEZ: So, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. You just said everybody on our side opposes amnesty. Let me just be clear about what you just said.

Are you saying when you say that to the American people, everybody on our side opposes any legislation that would allow someone presently living in the United States who's not legal to in any way have a path to citizenship so that he can acquire residency?

STEIN: Well, if the person can acquire it through lawful means like marriage to a U.S. citizen or what-have-you, but, you know, if they've fallen out of status, willfully disregarded U.S. immigration law, I wouldn't have given Obama's aunt asylum for example.

Look, the laws are laws. Laws matter. It is impossible for somebody to live here illegally, violating immigration law and not violate a lot of other laws as well, tax laws, withholding laws, involving fraudulent documents --

SANCHEZ: Well, no, no, no.

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