What do you think? *UPDATED*

No doubt you’ve heard — especially because it’s spread out on the top of Drudge — that the NHS issued a general warning against the domestic terrorism dangers of “right wing extremists” especially vets.  It didn’t identify any specific group, but just said extremists on the right can be dangerous.

There is a wild, hot debate now on the right side of the blogosphere (both in posts and in emails) about whether conservatives are right to be offended by this report.  Michelle Malkin and Ed Morrissey strongly believe that, to the extent the report differs from other DHS reports in being strikingly vague, rather than focusing on a specific political group (except, of course, for those ex-vets), it is extremely offensive.  On the other side, Charles Johnson and AJ Strata think that this is the usual DHS blather warning of extremism, and that it’s ridiculous for conservatives to get their knickers in a twist.

Just to throw one more thing in the mix, here’s a story from World Net Daily that I thought was a joke but that is, apparently, quite real.  For a while there, Missouri was apparently targeting people with Ron Paul and Bob Barr bumperstickers.  While I have no truck with these groups, to target them as radical extremists is insane.

So, what do you think?

UPDATE:  I’m inclined to agree with this post at Power Line, which views the report as a peculiar document on its own terms because its accusations are vague and unsupported, its sources one-sided, and its stated facts (such as those regarding the correlation in the past between the mid-1990s economy and an upsurge in domestic terrorism) are just plain wrong.  This is a political document, not a security assessment, and it’s therefore probably reasonable for conservatives to take umbrage (not to get hysterical, just to take umbrage) at its broad brush denigration of conservative beliefs, including the basic conservative tenet of a desire for a smaller federal government.

UPDATE II:  More thoughts, triggered by ruminating over the Power Line post, which I liked a great deal because I believe that to point out the actual facts about the report — its errors, inconsistencies, omissions, straw men, overarching statements, and one-sidedness — is a good thing.  That’s how we disinfect bad ideas.

To get furiously angry about the report, however, seems to me to be a problem, since it allows the Obama administration to point at our anger and say “See, we told you so.”  In other words, we play right into their trap.

Cool anger and ridicule seem like the best way to expose the sheer silliness of this document (a document that would be much more useful if it targeted genuinely radical organizations on either side of the political spectrum), without giving the Left an opportunity to point fingers at us.