Last night as I was going to bed, I had an idea for reinvigorating the left. Actually, it's more an idea about destabilizing the right: take a few plays from the FBI's COINTELPRO playbook and use them against right-wing hackery.

In case a brief reminder is in order, COINTELPRO comes from our good old McCarthyist friends, and it was designed to foster factionalism within leftist radical groups so they would either implode or take violent enough action that the government could crack down on them. The feds have disavowed the methods of COINTELPRO, but there's a strong likelihood that those methods are in use against contemporary peace activists--remember that brief story in Fahrenheit 9/11 about the peaceniks who found that they'd been infiltrated by a local sheriff's deputy?

Anyway, it's rather inconceivable that we could infiltrate a radical right organization and bring about internal disorder with any efficiency. What we could do, though, is embed ourselves in such an organization to make a negative impact externally. What I'm suggesting is that we could create PR nightmares for these people, much like their own leaders (Pat "Rob the Katrina Fund" Robertson, for example) do sometimes, but with more precision.

Imagine this scene: some rather polite students are holding signs on campus to support, say, the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to the Supreme Court. Their signs are reasonable, though misguided: "Support a Real 'Minority Opinion' on the Court," "Gonzales is a Patriot," etc. Off to the side stands a man who seems to fit in with the rest of the pro-Gonzales crowd, but his sign is more extreme: "Torturers Make the Constitution Proud." So long as it's not too over the top, a COINTELPRO II operative can pass himself off as an insider, causing significant trouble for the organization he infiltrates.

The ultimate goal here is not parody or sarcasm. It's the exposure of these righties' true motivation. Consider this potential COINTELPRO II slogan at one of Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform speeches: "No Way I'm Payin Fer Them Yeller Folks' Medicine." Or this one for a NRA rally: "I'll Favor Gun Control When You Favor Segregation."

Isn't it time that somebody unveils just how truly dangerous these groups' true motives can be?