Summary: The terrorist attack by Norwegian Christian fundamentalist Anders Behring Breivik in Oslo and at the youth camp on Utoya Island raises the specter of violent right-wing domestic extremism in Europe and echoes glimmers of an equivalent trend in the United States. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on July 24, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that Rep. Michele Bachmann said if Republicans win control of the House of Representatives in the November 2010 midterm election, “all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another” to “expose all the nonsense that is going on.”

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Summary: “Rise of the New Right: A Hardball Documentary with Chris Matthews” — Part 1: Don’t Tread on Me. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on July 7, 2009 Aubrey Immelman reported that seven U.S. troops died in three attacks in Afghanistan, on the same day that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, issued new guidelines limiting the use of airstrikes against residential compounds and other locations likely to produce civilian casualties, alienating Afghan villagers and causing loss of support for the Afghan government and the international mission.

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Summary: The growing fear among some citizens of losing their rights and freedoms has created a political backlash toward the U.S. government and manifested itself in violent rhetoric and anti-government groups who want to “take their country back.” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews takes a hard look at the recent surge of anger on the political right in “Rise of the New Right: A Hardball Documentary with Chris Matthews.” In this blog entry, Aubrey Immelman chronicles the rise of rightwing extremism in America following the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States in November 2008. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on June 16, 2009 Aubrey Immelman reported that North Korea threatened a “fire shower of nuclear retaliation” if provoked by the U.S., but that U.S. officials were downplaying any imminent threat to the United States of a North Korean missile strike or confrontation between the two countries at sea.

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Summary: On Good Friday, Christians around the world commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ — the holiest day in the Christian calendar. … The U.S. economy has posted its largest job gain in three years, with unemployment in March remaining at 9.7 percent for the third straight month. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on April 2, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning project of the St. Petersburg Times to help find the truth in American politics by fact-checking statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists, and interest groups and rating them on the Truth-O-Meter.

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Summary: Unrest over sweeping federal health care legislation has turned to vandalism and threats, with bricks hurled through congressional Democrats’ windows, a propane line cut at the home of a congressman’s brother, and menacing phone messages left for lawmakers who supported the bill. Against this background, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s longstanding pattern of incendiary rhetoric (such as calling on citizens to be “armed and dangerous”) is particularly disturbing, considering its potential for propagating violent extremism and inciting acts of domestic terrorism in a time of grave economic uncertainty. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 25, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Baghdad had been much calmer since sectarian violence peaked in late 2006 and the first half of 2007, but that the calm was achieved in part because the city became ethnically divided, with Shiites predominating and Sunnis largely having fled.

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Summary: Microsoft Network (MSN.com), promoting its new Bing! search engine, recently featured a demo search of “angry Americans.” It caught my attention, because history has shown that times of economic uncertainty — as we’re currently experiencing while bogged down in two wars in the aftermath of 9/11 — can be a fertile breeding ground for extremist ideologies, as we saw in Germany during the Great Depression following a humiliating defeat in World War I. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on the 13th day of his write-in campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman reported that he had launched a ground assault, with campaign ads running in 25 newspapers with a combined circulation of approximately 150,000.

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Summary: First in a two-part series examining the outlook for the 2010 U.S. House of Representatives election in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District. Part I surveys the political environment in which the contest will take place. Part II, to follow closer to the election, will take a look at the candidates. … One-year retrospective: On the 13th day of his campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination as House of Representatives candidate in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Sunday, July 27, 2008, Aubrey Immelman posted a public service announcement to help raise funds for memorials in honor of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and observed a day of rest.

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Summary: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused U.S. President Barack Obama of behaving like his White House predecessor George W. Bush and called on him to apologize for what he called U.S. interference following Iran’s elections. In terms of personal qualities, what are the similarities and differences between Barack Obama and George W. Bush? And how, specifically, do they differ from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Link to their psychological profiles, developed at the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics.

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Summary: Politico reports that U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) was one of the House of Representatives’ biggest spenders on congressional office expenses in the first quarter of 2009. “While businesses across the country are cutting back, members of the House saw their own office budgets increase by an average of 7 percent between 2008 and 2009. [An] analysis of the first-quarter 2009 MRA reports shows Michele Bachmann spent more than $380,000 during the three-month period — more than $100,000 more than the average first-quarter spending.”

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Summary: What’s worse — corporate bailout or no bailout? Financial analysts and federal officials have warned that doing nothing to save AIG — or banks or the auto industry — would lead to catastrophe: an economic domino effect of bank losses, stock market chaos, and job cuts. Here’s what might happen if companies deemed “too big to fail” were allowed to do just that.

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