William Kostric is the man who carried a gun to the Presidential health care talk in New Hampshire a few days ago. When he was on MSNBC he portrayed himself as a regular American guy just trying to demonstrate his constitutional rights. Just like the groups who claim to be regular citizens who are forming websites to battle against health care, it doesn’t take long for someone researching information on the web to find out the truth.

It’s a little buried, but checking on the Arizona Republic website there is an article talking about Kostric and how he had ties, when he was a resident in Arizona, to an extreme right wing group. He was a “team member” of a group called We the People, which is a group that want to take America back to “its founding principles.”

Why is it when a person or group talked about their America being taken away or returning America back to its founding principles the ping in my head goes crazy? Why has the extreme right wing co-opted the phrase so that talking about America makes someone seem like they are against America? It’s like religion being taken over by extremist zealots so that the ones in charge aren’t about peace, love and understanding but are about judgment and retribution.

The one thing about the separatist groups I see, especially in situations like this, is they are taken down by the exact publicity they want to spread their movement. When Kostric was on MSNBC he presented himself a little kooky, but he seemed like an earnest man. I wouldn’t hang out with the guy in a dark alley but he seemed rational enough not to do anything rash. With the paranoia groups like We the People have about the government you would think they would try to cover their tracks better. Just like the other fringe right wing groups out there, reporters can easily follow the electronic bread crumbs to find out all sorts of information on the groups.

All reporters had to do in Kostric’s case was check his MySpace page. All of a sudden he wasn’t some benign minor citizen but a zealot who probably could be pushed over the edge. He now isn’t some guy protesting gun laws but someone who probably does believe that Obama is an enemy and needs to be shot. His page is slightly disturbing with a lot of government is going down the tubes talk. It’s a different face of the man that was on MSNBC.

It’s what I don’t understand about the groups. I know they want to do recruitment and the web is the easiest way of doing this, but the electronic trail burns them every time. Instead of being honest about their affiliations they will claim something else, which only makes reporters curious and instead of the old days where it might take months to sift through records and use financial forensics, just a few keystrokes on a computer can get the information needed. That is something I must say I am with agreement with on some of the fringe groups, because information is so free out there it can get into the hands of people you may not want to know your information.

Does it disturb anyone that information on MySpace, Facebook or Twitter can be used against you in a job? You could be a great worker but say things on your “private” website but a few keystrokes and a perspective employer can find the information and if they don’t like what they see they can fire you. Now, this isn’t the government conspiracy that the right wing talks about but is more frightening that that. A government you can kid of figure out how they work but how do you protect yourself from a creditor or an employer? How do you prove you lost a job interview because of what was on your website? You can’t but companies do this all the time. How many stories have there been of students not getting into college because of postings on social networking sites? Just because they’re paranoid doesn’t mean no one is following them.