By Tony Perkins from The Patriot Post

The Southern Poverty Law Center likes to boast about its mission to “destroy” the groups it labels as “hate groups” — groups that now include mainstream conservative and Judeo-Christian organizations. But thankfully it appears the only thing being destroyed is its own credibility. Credibility that hit a near all-time low last week after the Department of Defense became the latest government entity to publicly distance itself from a group that’s been connected in federal court to domestic terrorism. Assistant U.S. attorney Brian Field stated in response to a Freedom of Information Request that “all references to the SPLC have been removed from any current [Department of Defense] training.”

If you are a longtime Washington Update reader, you may remember that it was nearly four years ago that we sent a letter asking the Department of Defense to take this very action. The DOD is now getting in line behind other government agencies like the DOJ and the FBI. In February, the FBI admitted to removing the SPLC from its hate crimes resources page over a “number of concerns.” In May, the news broke that the Obama Department of Justice rebuked SPLC lawyers for using the poverty center’s “hate group” label to dismiss a conservative advocacy group. Using a map contrived by the poverty center “overstepped the bounds of zealous advocacy and was unprofessional,” a disciplinary lawyer in the department said in an internal document. Such behavior, it said, was “uncivil” and “constitutes frivolous behavior and does not aid the administration of justice.”

This summer eyebrows were raised when The Washington Free Beacon and Weekly Standard found that the SPLC had moved tens of millions of its $320 million endowment fund into offshore accounts. Other questions about the SPLC’s trustworthiness have been raised in The Wall Street Journal, on PBS, and even in The New York Times. Both the Left and Right have the same question: What kind of nonprofit has “poverty” in its name but pours millions of dollars into offshore accounts? Well, we’ve created a new video that tries to explain SPLC’s overseas “treasure map.” The SPLC’s captain tells the tale. Sail over to SPLCexposed.com for more.

Originally published at: http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WA17J18&f=WU17J06

For more on this story and video go to: https://patriotpost.us/opinion/51757