Former Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Michele Bachmann, has declared a crusade against American Muslims in public life with her attacks on State Department aide, Huma Abedin and now, fellow Rep. Keith Ellison. She accused Ellison, without any proof whatsoever, of having longstanding ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. It appears that the Minnesota House member’s major sin was questioning letters Bachmann sent the four federal inspectors general asking that they investigate Abedin’s own ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Quite sensibly, Ellison asked Bachmann to produce any evidence that she had to support her contention.
Most of this lunacy was originally hatched in the brain of anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney, whose Center for Security Policy employs David Yerushalmi to write anti-Sharia legislation that is popular in many state legislatures. Several years ago Gaffney tried to pull this crap on Grover Norquist, who is married to an Arab woman who is also a government official. He accused Norquist of being part of a sinister Muslim Brotherhood plot to infiltrate the U.S. government. If this sounds like Joe McCarthy and the old John Birch Society smears regarding Communist infiltration of American government, it should. There’s almost no difference between these two hysteria-inducing movements.
