Racist beehive buzzing.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - Effect of the election of President Barack Obama on racism in the United States - Editorial

I received the following letter, postmarked Cincinnati, which came in one of those envelopes we occasionally stitch into the magazine.

"America is in deep, deep trouble.

"The country lost its mind last November and went and elected a Third World chimp as President.

"So who can be surprised now that Barack Hussein Obama is spending our money like a drunken nigger on Saturday night."

I know such hideous, racist sentiments are aloft in the land, but I didn't expect to find them articulated (if you can call it that) by someone who had to have been holding The Progressive in his hands.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with Molly Ivins a couple of years before she died. She told me she wasn't at all surprised that President Kennedy was assassinated that day in Dallas because the atmosphere had gotten so toxic in Texas at the time.

When the rightwing nuts start carrying signs that say things like "Euthanize Obama" or "Obama is the Antichrist" or that depict him as Hitler, and when they start bringing loaded guns to his events, I can't help but grow worried for Obama's physical safety.

Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service , reports that Obama is receiving thirty death threats a day, which is about four times the number Bush got. But the Secret Service is not expanding commensurate with this threat level, and agents are complaining they can't do their job.

I believe racism is behind a big chunk of these threats--and behind a lot of the ugliness we saw in August at the town hall meetings on health care.

I looked at the Southern Poverty Law Center's recent study on the renewed growth of the militia movement today. The report said the movement is not exactly the same as the one that created Timothy McVeigh.

"A key difference this time," said the Southern Poverty...