MEDIA MATTERS: Yesterday, we highlighted a Newsmax column by John L. Perry essentially advocating a military coup to resolve the “Obama problem” (while, of course, claiming he was advocating no such thing). It’s just the latest example of extreme right-wing rhetoric directed at President Obama. Now, it appears that Newsmax has removed the column from its website; the link to it defaults to Perry’s main column page. Fortunately, we made a copy. MORE
NEWSMAX: There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic. America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it. […] Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a “family intervention,” with some form of limited, shared responsibility? Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making. Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible. MORE
THOM FRIEDMAN: I was in Israel interviewing Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin just before he was assassinated in 
1995. We had a beer in his office. He needed one. I remember the ugly mood in Israel then — a mood in which extreme right-wing settlers and politicians were doing all they could to delegitimize Rabin, who was committed to trading land for peace as part of the Oslo accords. They questioned his authority. They accused him of treason. They created pictures depicting him as a Nazi SS officer, and they shouted death threats at rallies. His political opponents winked at it all. And in so doing they created a poisonous political environment that was interpreted by one right-wing Jewish nationalist as a license to kill Rabin — he must have heard, “God will be on your side” — and so he did. Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination. MORE
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RELATED: Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C.) offered unusually blunt assessments of the fringe elements of his party and conservative media on Thursday, calling the popular and bombastic Fox News host Glenn Beck a “cynic” whose show was antithetical to American values. “Only in America can you make that much money crying,” Graham said of Beck. “Glenn Beck is not aligned with any party. He is aligned with cynicism and there has always been a market for cynics. But we became a great nation not because we are a nation of cynics. We became a great nation because we are a nation of believers.” Appearing before a crowd of Washington’s elite power players and opinion-makers, Graham spoke largely without filter, offering acidic takes on subject well beyond Beck. The Senator called the birther community that questions the president’s U.S. citizenship “crazy” and implored them to “knock this crap off” so the country could get on to more important matters. “I’m here to tell you that those who think the president was not born in Hawaii are crazy,” said Graham, who went on to dispel another myth: that Obama is a closet Muslim. Speaking before The Atlantic’s First Draft of History conference, Graham also ventured to call “crazy” a recent article on Newsmax, laying out how a military coup could overtake the Obama administration. MORE