THE RIGHT'S SUMMER OF RACE-BAITING CONTINUES

This, of all things, is the lead story at Fox Nation right now:



You want to watch the shocking, horrifying video of "radical ACORN thugs" (in the words of Jim Hoft) "storming" this bank? Here you go. I hope it's not too frenzied for you:



Bloody hell. Nobody's "storming" anything. These people aren't even moving. They're just yelling real loud, kinda like ... er, tea party members in a Democratic congressman's office. (Except many of these people are, well, a tad darker-complected, thus they're "thugs.")

This horrible act of thuggery took place on Monday. Um, it's Thursday. This is news?

The ultimate source for this Fox Nation story is, by astonishing coincidence, Andrew Breitbart's Big Government. But don't read too much into that, because Howie Kurtz assures me that Breitbart and Fox are just casual acquaintances who don't coordinate their activities or anything like that.

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I also learn via Mr. Breitbart that one of the worst people on earth, Congressman Steve King, thinks Shirley Sherrod's hiring -- not her forced resignation -- should be investigated, and he pledges to conduct that investigation if Republicans take over the House.

Here's Ben Shapiro at Big Government:

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to interview Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) for my radio show, "The Ben Shapiro Show," which broadcasts every Sunday 1-4 PM ET in Orlando, FL. The topic of Shirley Sherrod came up, and in particular, the topic of the so-called Pigford Farms settlement.

For background, the Pigford Farms case is a class-action lawsuit filed against the federal government on behalf of black farmers and black wannabe farmers, who say they were discriminated against in loan proceedings. The federal government settled Pigford Farms for an unbelievable $1.15 billion. An incredibly high percentage of those receiving awards under this settlement have done so fraudulently....

Yes -- in the tape of the interview (see below), King claims that, according to his sources, between 75% and 99% of the claims filed in this case were fraudulent. Yeah, they're all just leeching, the fraudsters! Oh, did the good congressman mention that these people are black?

You can go here, here, and here for a very different take on this case. The government acknowledged wrongdoing. Sherrod and her husband sued along with other black families as members of a land trust called New Communities; King thinks it's suspicious that the amount they were awarded was larger than the average, but I'd assume that a land trust involving several households might be deserving of more than, say, an individual farmer, no?

(KIng's version of reality, by contrast, roughly tracks the one in this Washington Examiner story.)

So King wants to re-pillory Shirley Sherrod, trying her in the kangaroo court that will be the House of Representatives in 2011 and 2012 if Republicans win control. I suspect he'll get his wish, and I suspect Fox and its allies will make this the #1 story in America when that happens.