THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…

 

Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security Peter King (R-NY 3) held a hearing on the “Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.”

 

This had echoes of the McCarthy hearings from the 1950s. In fact, John Dingell (D-MI 15) stated: "For years, I ran investigative committees. I kept a picture of Joe McCarthy hanging on the wall so that I would know what it was I did not want to look like, to do or to be."

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN 5), who is the first Muslim elected to the U.S. House, had this to say to the committee:

I am also reminded of a statement that Colin Powell made when he formally endorsed Barack Obama for President on Meet the Press in October 2008:

So… what were the Founding Fathers’ opinions about the Muslim faith?

From the Treaty of Tripoli negotiated during the end of George Washington’s final term and ratified in the early part of John Adams’s term:

ARTICLE XI: As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries

Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of the Qur’an. In January 2007, a newly elected Representative was sworn into the U.S. House with Jefferson’s Qur’an. That person was…

Representative Ellison of Minnesota

Back to Representative King of New York…

You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?