Fox Mainstreams Blogger Who Incited Vandalism Of Dem Offices

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http://mediamatters.org/blog/201109280010?frontpage

September 28, 2011 11:36 am ET by Matt Gertz

In March 2010, right-wing blogger Mike Vanderboegh made headlines across the country after he urged his followers to respond to health care reform by breaking the windows of Democratic offices and then took credit after it actually happened.

Eighteen months later, Fox News has repeatedly featured the former militia and Minuteman leader as an "authority" on the ATF's failed Operation Fast and Furious.

In January, Vanderboegh was among the first to break the story that ATF agents had knowingly allowed gun trafficking suspects to take weapons across the border into Mexico. According to Republican congressional investigators, the operation was intended to allow law enforcement to identify other members of the trafficking network that for years has directed assault weapons into the hands of Mexican cartels, with the goal of bringing those cartels down.

But according to Vanderboegh, the failed operation was actually part of a secret plot against the Second Amendment directed from the highest levels of government (a theory Fox News itself has at times promoted). He has also pushed bizarre theories linking the program to Hillary Clinton not running for President and to the so-called "Cloward-Piven strategy."

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1. This Vanderboegh guy seems to be a pretty active web weaver, as well as a RW literary darling.

Thanks for bringing him to our attention. Sure we'll hear more about Mike - maybe from the FBI. B-)