I sit squarely on the fence when it comes to conspiracy theories. I don’t believe the government is covering up evidence of aliens at Area 51, but I think there may have been a government coverup in the assassination of John Kennedy. I don’t believe that the government faked the Apollo landings, but I believe there’s pretty good evidence for a “vast right wing conspiracy” as Hillary was once laughed at for suggesting were behind the witch hunt for President Clinton. I haven’t heard anyone suggest the following charge before though, so perhaps I can claim authorship on this one!

If you ever listen to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, watch Bill O’Reilly or see Ann Coulter on TV then you may be witness to how the current administration’s political party is doing an end run around the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. The Act prohibits the broadcast of state sponsored propoganda into the United States. The Act is pretty scary in that legally we don’t have the right to hear and evaluate the kind of programs we are broadcasting to the world in our name, but at the same time it is supposed to protect us from being subject to non-journalistic, misleading propoganda. The Act prevents US citizens from listening to government (read:tax) sponsored Voice of America for instance, so how does the average citizen find out if the message broadcast to the rest of the world sounds anything like that coming from right wing radio and TV? The rise of the internet is generally supposed to have made the Act largely irrelevant, but in reality most people get their news from the big broadcasters. So far the big three have maintained a modicum of journalistic integrity albeit tempered by the interests of their big business parent companies. However, the Right wing radio/TV crowd acts solely as a mouthpiece for the Republican party probably at the direction of Karl Rove who has proven how repeating a thing enough times may not make it true, but it sure makes it sound that way.

I believe it is completely within the rights of broadcasters to espouse their political philosophies over American airwaves if they can get (and keep) a job doing it and they don’t violate the rules of the FCC. Which, incidentally, as far as I can tell Howard Stern most recently did NOT, although he was dumped anyway. So, Hannity and Limbaugh can wax nostalgic on any topic they choose and if it happens to be exactly the Republican party line so what? Certainly it wouldn’t be an issue unless your tax money was used to create and disseminate this information to you and then present it as unbiased, fair and balanced reporting. This is only part of the conspiracy, the silly part. OK, so I have no evidence for this, but thats the beauty of a conspiracy theory! You don’t need evidence, just common sense.

Here’s the part of the conspiracy that is more obvious (and sinister): The Right wing has begun to re-populate government with Iran-Contra criminals. These are non-elected officials who wield immense power in OUR name. You don’t need a lot of fancy letters at the end of your name to understand the implications of having ex-Iran Contra criminal John Poindexter back at the Pentagon. “[Poindexter] was convicted in 1990 of five felony counts of lying to Congress, destroying official documents and obstructing congressional inquiries into the Iran-contra affair, which involved the secret sale of arms to Iran in the mid-1980s and diversion of profits to help the contra rebels in Nicaragua. (from the Washington Post 11/12/02) More recently he was appointed director of the Information Awareness Office, a vile construct whose purposes include data mining to gather personal information and intelligence on the activities of US citizens in order to create a computerized profile of the intimate details of your life. The main purpose of the office is to work on the “Total Information Awareness” project which gathers and compiles the emails you have sent, websites you have visited, books you have bought online, banking transactions you’ve made as well as travel details, school curriculum, grades and medical history will be available to the intelligence community all without a warrant. I read George Orwell in High School too, but I guess I took away a different moral.
Read a summary at the liberal think tank

How about Elliot Abrams at the National Security Council (NSC)? Pardoned by Bush Sr. for his involvement in the coverup of mass rape and murder in Central America, Abrams has a long and storied history as a hawk. Abrams is on record as supporting a policy of military domination of the middle east by the US, Isreal and Turkey, and seems determined to help thwart any attempt at a move toward peace bewteen Isreal and the Palestinians.
Some details here

The appointment of John Negroponte as ambassador to the UN who had been involved the the cover-up of human rights abuses committed by CIA-trained paramilitaries (now we call them “terrorists”) in Honduras in the 80s. Otto Reich, illegally appointed after doing a legal side-step of the normally required Senate confirmation to the post of Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs was particularly scary. It has been suggested in some off-beat news circles that the coup in Venezula of democratically elected Hugo Chavez was orchestrated or at least funded by the current administration with the help of these great patriots.

Right wing radio and TV paints anyone who does not tout the party line as “haters of America” and “treasonous”. They condemn the United Nations (a creation of the allies in 1942 based on the League of Nations) for obviously anti-american activities like maintaining peace an security, attempting diplomatic solutions to problems that otherwise might require war, promoting democracy and human rights.
Too many UN evils to mention here

[editor note: the Oil for Food Scandal broke right after I wrote this]

The Federalist papers (the precursor to the Constitution) was riddled with warnings against “factions” (better known as ‘political parties’ today) and we can see the danger they present most clearly now. All branches of the U.S. government are currently controlled by a single party. The sitting president was not even elected but was instead installed by act of a “right-leaning” judiciary. If all of this doesn’t convince you to at least investigate these statements, then there is no hope for the United States of America and Bob Grant is right.