蜜桃传媒

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin is convening an in Washington today to examine the threat of domestic extremism and hate crime in the wake of the horrific attack on Sikh worshippers in Wisconsin last month.

If the hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee鈥檚 Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights does nothing else but put additional pressure on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to take far-right extremism seriously, it will be worthwhile.

In 2009, the DHS caved to criticism from the political right and essentially gutted its unit that monitored non-Islamic domestic terrorism. The action came after heated but misguided criticism from right-wing commentators about a 鈥� an entirely accurate and prescient report, in fact 鈥� that warned of a rising threat of terrorism from various sectors of the radical right. Most members of the unit left the agency after enduring what they considered unjustified criticism from within the DHS. The agency now claims the unit is fully functional, but the lead author of the 2009 report, former DHS analyst Daryl Johnson,

In submitted to Durbin鈥檚 panel today, Heidi Beirich, director of the 蜜桃传媒鈥檚 Intelligence Project, urged federal vigilance in the face of what strong evidence suggests is a rising threat.

Earlier this year, the 蜜桃传媒 reported that the ranks of far-right in the past three years, a period coinciding with the Obama administration. The 蜜桃传媒 is tracking 鈥� a 69 percent increase since 2000. But the most explosive, recent growth has come among which have increased by 755% in the past three years 鈥� from 149 groups in 2008 to 1,274 in 2011.

Members of both hate groups and Patriot groups have been arrested or otherwise implicated in terror plots in recent months.

, the shooter in the Aug. 5 attack in Wisconsin, was a musician who performed with a variety of white supremacist bands and also a member of the Northern Hammerskins, a faction of one of the most violent, racist skinhead gangs in the country. On Aug. 5, he walked into the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek, and killed six Sikhs and wounded four other people, including a police officer, before shooting himself in the head.

That attack was the latest in a series of in recent months and years.

In November, for example, the FBI arrested four members of a who were accused of various crimes in a plot to kill federal officials and attack cities with the deadly ricin toxin. In May, members of the , a militia-style white supremacist group, were arrested in Florida for planning acts of violence and preparing for 鈥渁n inevitable race war.鈥�