Hey there, White House! Ha ha! Charade you are!

A new Department of Homeland Security report warns that dangerous right-wing elements could be exploiting the economic downturn, fears of gun control, and the presence of a black man in the Oval Office to recruit people to their extremist causes.

By way of evidence, DHS offers... well, not much. A bit of conjecture. A dollop of speculation. Pro forma invocation of the late, unlamented Timothy McVeigh. References to angry web chatter and some recycled propaganda from liberal activist groups and a foreign university. And that's about it.

Radio talk show host Roger Hedgecock touted the report on Monday and Eli Lake and Audrey Hudson of the Washington Times followed up with a story on Tuesday. That in turn provoked cries of alarm and outrage from conservatives who fear a crackdown on dissent from the Obama administration.

Truth is, the report is just the sort of blinkered, philistine, pig-ignorant analysis we've come expect from the career bureaucrats at Homeland Security. The nine-page brief is impossibly vague and open-ended. DHS names no specific groups, offers no specific numbers, and says the threat so far is "largely rhetorical." With maybe one exception, the report relies entirely on anecdotal evidence -- which hardly counts as evidence at all -- derived from dubious sources, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group unable to distinguish a Klansman from a policy wonk.

The report is almost wholly conjectural and so freighted with qualifiers and caveats as to be useless as a policy-making guide or as intelligence for law enforcement. Mind you, intelligence professionals wrote the thing! This is what you get when bureaucrats value "intelligence" over intelligence.

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In short, the DHS report is a joke and in a sane world nobody would take it seriously. It's only dangerous because it can and likely will be exploited by demagogues in government and charlatans in the press to create an army of bogeymen the likes of which hasn't been seen since the Angry White Men of the mid-'90s. Well, now that we know what the game is, the response should be obvious: Call out the authors. Demand hard evidence. Mock and deride the security bureaucrats who don't view Americans as citizens, but rather as suspects. Point out how "right-wing extremists" should be the least of Homeland Security's worries.

Yet the reaction among some conservative bloggers has been nothing short of hysterical. The ordinarily sensible Ed Morrissey claims: "The DHS ... smear(s) half of the country or more as kooks for criticizing the government’s handling of the economy." Having read the report, I don't think that's quite right. Political obtuseness is more likely than actual malice here.

Morrissey's boss, Michelle Malkin, insists: "In Obama land, there are no coincidences. It is no coincidence that this report echoes Tea Party-bashing left-wing blogs ... and demonizes the very Americans who will be protesting in the thousands on Wednesday for the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party." In that case, forewarned is forearmed. When a reporter asks a nice soccer mom at a tea party whether she's a neo-nazi, she should just laugh off the question and talk about why high taxes are robbing her family of their quality of life to pay for an ever-larger and less-accountable federal bureaucracy.

Similarly, Andrew McCarthy at National Review Online concludes the DHS report heralds the "first of many Domestic Contingency Operations" (a ham-handed reference to the Obama administration's re-designation of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan as "Overseas Contingency Operations"). And the "Good Lt." at the Jawa Report calls the DHS report "a nakedly Orwellian effort to stifle and discourage political opposition to the Democrats."

Skepticism of government is wise, but paranoia is deadly. Is the DHS report cause for alarm? Maybe just a little. But it's worthy more of mockery than fear. Are the feds going to swoop down on the Tea Party protests and haul the organizers off to Gitmo? In Glenn Greenwald's dreams. I say: Let them. The publicity would be invaluable.

John Hinderaker at Powerline has one of the most sober takes on the DHS brief. After tearing apart the report's tissue-thin substance, Hinderaker concludes: "It's hard to avoid the conclusion that this Homeland Security report is politically motivated, and reflects the authors' political prejudices more than an objective evaluation of a significant terrorist threat." But note well that Hinderaker counsels caution and vigilance, not panic.

Conservatives in the 1990s fell too easily into a hatred and paranoia about Bill Clinton, which perversely helped fuel the Bush Derangement Syndrome of these past eight years. Despite all manner of warnings, conservatives appear intent on indulging the worst paranoid fantasies of the left for the duration of Obama's presidency. It's a mistake. It's not smart politics. Fight on the merits. Fight on policy. Fight with the Constitution. But don't fight crazy. Don't lose your heads.