Daniel Horowitz for Red State:

"...[Last week's] shooting at the Family Research Council brings to mind something that has bothered me about self-described civil rights organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center.  For years, the SPLC has ingratiated themselves to the public by evincing an image of a politically neutral organization that serves as the one-stop resource for information on bigoted and violent organizations.  But instead of focusing exclusively on true “hate organizations” like white supremacists and Islamic jihadists, the SPLC has pursued a political agenda in recent years to defame conservative organizations by lumping them in with neo-Nazis and skinheads. 

... In 2010, SPLC labeled the Family Research Council as a hate group and listed them together with no-name neo-Nazi groups on their site.  They did the same for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that simply advocates lower levels of immigration out of fiscal and national security concerns.  When did we get to a point where groups that have a different political agenda from the SPLC are branded as hate groups?"