The Southern Poverty Law Center is rightly seen as a pernicious and loathsome racket. It warns that terrorists lurk among veterans and Tea Partiers; its labeling of the Family Research Council as a \u201chate group\u201d inspired a gay activist to attempt a murderous attack on the FRC\u2019s Washington offices; and it beat Politico to the smear by putting Ben Carson on a list of \u201cextremists,\u201d on par with David Duke and Fred Phelps (for which is was forced to apologize<\/a>).<\/p>\n But sometimes the SPLC\u2019s righteous fanaticism leads to comical errors. An example of that arose last month at a conference of immigration skeptics outside Washington. Heidi Beirich, one of the SPLC\u2019s chief propagandists, wrote a blog post<\/a> to help mainstream a posting from an even more extreme group than hers. The upshot was that Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (sometime National Review contributor<\/a>) is evil because he spoke at a \u201cwhite nationalist\u201d conference. And her tactic succeeded; Beirich\u2019s posting was the basis of an editorial <\/a>last week by the Kansas City Star criticizing Kobach\u2019s \u201cdespicable behavior\u201d for hobnobbing with the wicked.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the funny part: Beirich\u2019s posting was illustrated with a photo of Kobach speaking at the conference, the caption of which notes that it was taken from the Twitter feed of one @Hunter7Taylor. What do you find when you go to @hunter7taylor<\/a>\u2019s profile? This:<\/p>\n Inger Eberhart a ‘white nationalist’, according to the SPLC<\/p><\/div>\n White nationalist? Turns out her name is Inger Eberhart. I was at the conference too and, though I don\u2019t know her, the photo is definitely her.<\/p>\n So, the SPLC chose to illustrate a menacing warning about a \u201cwhite nationalist\u201d conference with a photo taken and tweeted by a black woman. And not a plant, but a participant who\u2019s on the board of the Dustin Inman Society, Georgia\u2019s immigration-control citizens\u2019 group led by the indefatigable D.A. King.<\/p>\n As she wrote<\/a>, \u201cI was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia in the years immediately following the civil rights era. I would spot a real white nationalist a lot faster than you ever could.\u201d Eberhart wasn\u2019t the only improbable \u201cwhite nationalist.\u201d Maria Espinoza, daughter of a Mexican immigrant and past president of Houston Eagle Forum, heads the Remembrance Project,<\/a> which honors Americans killed by illegal aliens.<\/p>\n Two other speakers were also Hispanic Americans. This gathering of \u201cwhite nationalists\u201d also featured a panel featuring me, Mike Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation (a Cuban immigrant who spoke on promoting assimilation and fighting multiculturalism) and George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan (who made a forthright argument for open borders). As Caplan noted afterward<\/a> on his blog, \u201cthe audience was polite, with little of the vitriol that so sullies cyberspace.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, yes, I know, I shouldn\u2019t expect anything different from leftist goons. And I don\u2019t really; Beirich is clearly an end-justifies-the-means Alinskyite. But I had expected a certain level of competence, which is apparently lacking. As the great Londo Mollari said, \u201cArrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Inger](\"http:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/pics_art\/Hunter7Taylor_twitter_gwEdXn8G_400x400.jpg\")