A federal judge said Monday that the White supremacist accused of killing a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is physically unable to appear in court right now. The suspect, 88-year-old James von Brunn, was shot in the face after shooting to death 39-year-old museum security officer Stephen T. Johns. Brunn, who is in critical but stable condition, allegedly shot the African-American guard in the chest with a vintage rifle after Johns opened the door for him. U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola determined that an initial hearing with von Brunn, either at the courthouse or in his hospital room, would not be possible next week. “Obviously, he’s not able to get to court,” Facciola said after their discussion. He scheduled another hearing for next Monday to get an update. Brunn is expected to live.

Calling themselves a “White civil rights organization,” the National Socialist Movement (NSM) and other White-supremacist groups are growing rapidly in what many anti-racism watchdogs are describing as a perfect storm of hate – a poor economy, burgeoning Latino and Asian populations, and an African-American in the White House. The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Ala., says, for example, that the man who recently blasted his way through the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., had ties to several other racist groups, including neo-Nazis. Armed with a rifle, James Wenneker von Brunn ended up killing security guard Stephen T. Johns  before his hate-filled tirade was over. The law center says there are some 926 active hate groups in the United States, up from 602 eight years ago. That’s a 54-percent increase. Speaking to CNN recently, Brian Levin, associate professor and director of the Center for Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, attributed the rise to the splintering of larger groups. “Each person connected to these groups appears to be more riled up and more active,” Levin said. Heidi Beirich, director of research at the Southern Poverty Law Center, agrees. “If you look at the Web site postings, this is what they’re talking about: a terrible economy, immigrants taking your jobs, and having a Black president,” Beirich said.

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A “shocked and saddened” President Obama, who recently returned from a visit to Buchenwald, a former German concentration camp, is reminding that von Brunn’s actions are a stark reminder of just how important it is stand strong against the world’s forces that divide along lines of race, religion and ethnicity. “This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms,” Obama said Wednesday. “No American institution is more important to this effort than the Holocaust museum, and no act of violence will diminish our determination to honor those who were lost by building a more peaceful and tolerant world.”

The 88-year-old suspect in the murder of a guard at Washington, D.C.’s Holocaust Museum is a White supremacist who has a long history of spewing hatred against Blacks and Jews. Authorities say that James W. von Brunn, who founded the hate site known as “The Holy Western Empire,” strolled past metal detectors at the museum Wednesday and kicked off a shootout that left African American Stephen Tyrone Johns, a six-year veteran of the museum’s security staff, dead. Johns “died heroically in the line of duty,” said museum Director Sara Bloomfield. “Obviously there are no words to express our grief and shock over the horrific event that took place at this museum today.” The shooter timed his assault on the day the museum was to stage a play based on Anne Frank, the Jewish diarist whose 80th birthday would have been Friday, according to authorities. They say von Brunn immediately shot the 40-year-old Johns, who died at George Washington University Hospital. Officers returned fire, hitting von Brunn. As of last night, he was in critical condition.

The Georgia White supremacist whose life was spared on Tuesday was executed Wednesday, soon after a technical glitch was cleared up by a federal judge. William Mark Mize, a 52-year-old inmate, was sentenced to die 15 years ago for killing Eddie Tucker, a White truck driver who refused to burn down a purported crack house as an initiation rite to enter Mize’s racist organization. Read more.

White supremacist William Mark Mize, who was scheduled to be put to death Tuesday, was spared – at least temporarily – because of a court technicality. Read why.

Hate Groups See Obama’s Election as a Good Thing In the eyes of many White supremacist groups, the election of a Black president wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Federal law enforcement officials and those who keep a bead on racist organizations say that these groups have seen a dramatic rise in their Internet recruitment since Barack Obama was elected. “It is the dark, underside of the Internet,” Raynham Police Chief Louis J. Pacheco, one of the founders of the High Tech Crime Consortium, told The Enterprise News of Brockton, Mass. “The Internet allows instant gratification and positive reinforcement to things outside the mainstream idea that you couldn’t  get prior.” The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which monitors white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity, counted 630  “hate sites” on the Web last year.  ”Every time the television shows an image of Obama it will be a reminder that our people have lost power in this country,” said a recent posting on an Arkansas-based Ku Klux Klan Web site. Read the rest here.