On July 17^th, 2010, 45 year old Byron Williams was stopped by California Highway Patrol officers on Interstate 580 in Oakland, California for driving erratically.  A violent shootout ensued, and twelve minutes later, it was over.  Police had unknowingly averted an even more heinous crime before it could occur.  The police affidavit filed the next day stated that Williams’ intention was “to start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at The Tides Foundation and the ACLU.”

The left-wing media immediately pounced on the story, eager to exploit the mention of the Tides Foundation, a frequent topic of Glenn Beck’s program on the FOX News Channel.  Since Beck’s arrival to FOX, he has focused in on the organization for its central role in pushing far-left policies and funding left-wing propaganda outlets like Media Matters.  The liberal media watchdog site has been covering the story recently.

In fact, Media Matters, which has received more than $2 million from the Tides Foundation over the last five years, has relentlessly harassed conservative personalities and organizations, especially Glenn Beck, often in what appears to be a coordinated fashion – and to the point of complete monotony.  Just search “Byron Williams” on their website – for the last week alone, Media Matters has made over thirty posts associating Beck with the Byron Williams incident, seemingly implying that Beck and FOX News are directly responsible for Williams’ actions.

That’s why it came as little surprise Friday when the Tides Foundation released this scathing letter to all of FOX News’ advertisers, signed by CEO Drummond Pike.  It reads in part:

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This past July, in a formal request it filed with the prosecutors of Maryland state and the city of Baltimore, a left-leaning organization known as Velvet Revolution urged prosecutors to press criminal charges against James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles for what it says was a violation of Maryland’s Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act.  But the letter also went a step further, naming Andrew Breitbart as a conspirator in masterminding the whole operation.

The accusation against Breitbart is of course patently false and baseless.  No evidence exists to even suggest such an accusation, because it simply did not happen that way.  Then again, this story’s not about Andrew Breitbart.  It’s about Velvet Revolution, the source making the claim.

Progressives are also rallying behind Velvet Revolution for another of its most recent campaigns – AmericanCrossRoadsWatch, which, to the delight of familiar folks like Karoli at Crooks and Liars, has offered a $100,000 bounty “for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Karl Rove or any principal of American Crossroads for money laundering, election rigging, or felony campaign finance violations.”  It features a WANTED poster:

Interesting, that the words “felony” and “Wanted” would be used.  Again, considering the source.

You see, while Velvet Revolution has inspired quite a flurry of excitement from its progressive partners these days, who seem to be frolicking in their apparent muckraking efforts, their glaring omission and utter hypocrisy is absolutely astonishing.  With so much dirt digging going on, one would be very hard pressed to believe that none of Velvet Revolution’s cheerleaders had any idea whatsoever that a convicted violent felon is one of its co-founders.  In an environment today when the left has repeatedly falsely accused most opposition of being racist, hateful and violent, how convenient that progressives would fail to acknowledge the hypocrisy of their own implicit support of real violence and law-breaking.

The story behind Velvet Revolution begins with musician-activist turned immigrants’ rights defender turned voting rights activist, Brett Kimberlin, who also runs the “Justice Through Music Project (JTMP).”  According to journalist Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog, he and Kimberlin co-founded Velvet Revolution together, a detail Friedman has specifically noted in a number of posts such as this one from 5/31/2007.

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Since President Obama’s elevation to Intergalactic Superstar Caesar in   November 2008, the media has been busy writing obituaries for the GOP. Most of these unwelcome mourners have offered nuggets of advice along the lines of, “Why don’t you try being more, you know, like us? More—what’s the term? Oh yes, more moderate. Conservatism is so last season.” The day after Obama’s  election, the Huffington Post gleefully announced “GOP Civil War Begins[!!!!!!]”

Being the tenderhearted folks they are, the liberal MSM diagnosed the real problem for us: “[I]f there’s a real crisis in the House right now for the Republican Party, it’s the gradually diminishing voice of moderation.” Over a year later, MSNBC was still going strong with the GOP civil war theme, warning that an ideological purity test “threatens to derail moderate Republican candidacies in heated 2010 Republican primaries already underway.”

Obviously, there have been and are ongoing arguments about the direction of conservatism and the Republican party. The 2008 election would’ve shaken the confidence of Alexander the Great, had he been a political candidate instead of a slaughtering conqueror. But the media is missing the real story again. The story now isn’t the demise of the GOP moderate. It’s the sudden downfall of last season’s debutante, the “moderate Democrat.” (more…)