Justin's Political Corner

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) is still reeling from Attorney General Eric Holder’s attempt to cast aspersions on his asparagus, and took to the House Floor today to accuse the Justice Department and intelligence agencies of working with Muslim Brotherhood front groups.

Gohmert, who earlier claimed that Americans may need to use their guns to prevent the establishment of Sharia law, claimed that the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America are both “front organizations for the Muslim Brotherhood” and “want Sharia law to be the law of the land, not our Constitution.”

While Gohmert argued that the Fifth Circuit Court “confirmed” CAIR and ISNA’s Muslim Brotherhood allegiance, the court actually removed their designation as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial and cleared them of such a status.

Late one evening last month, in one fell swoop at the end of the legislative session,Missouri lawmakers passed three conservative bills that earned the state a bit of national mockery: A bill to block all federal gun control, legislation to restrict a 1992 United Nations green development pledge — and a proposal to ban the enforcement of Sharia Law, the religious law of Islam. For some Republicans, it was a historic night of many feats. For others, it was, at the least, quite puzzling.

Governor Jay Nixon, a Democrat, now has the task of reviewing these bills and took the step yesterday of publicly shooting down the latter one aimed at protecting Missourians from Islamic religious law — which, as critics point out, is not exactly a real threat.

In fact, according to Nixon, the bill is not only pointless, but it could have a serious unintended consequence.

See also: 
- Brian Nieves Outburst: “Are You Reporters Listening to This?” (VIDEO)
- Brian Nieves Writes Insane E-Mails to Constituent Who Doesn’t Want His Newsletters
- Rick Stream Sends Bizarre E-Mail About the Dangers of Islam…Citing Churchill?

The bill in question is Senate Bill 267, sponsored by Republican State Senator Brian Nieves and officially called the “Civil Liberties Defense Act.” The legislation, as written, establishes that the state must “protect its citizens from the application of foreign laws when the application of a foreign law will result in the violation of a right protected by the constitutions of the state of Missouri and the United States, including, but not limited to, due process, freedom of religion, speech, or press, and any right of privacy.”

It does not directly mention Sharia Law, but as we noted when the proposal was first debated, the language of the bill very closely mirrors anti-Islamic law bills that have cropped around the country and originate with controversial individuals intent on presenting this religion as a threat to American freedom.

(And bizarre, anti-Islam rhetoric is not totally uncommon at the Capitol).

Nixon, however, focused on a problem that he says the bill could create — that is, an obstacle to foreign adoptions in Missouri.

The governor, who came to Lutheran Family & Children’s Services in St. Louis to formally veto the bill yesterday afternoon, says in a statement:

This legislation seeks to solve a problem that does not exist, while creating the very real problem of jeopardizing Missouri’s families’ ability to adopt children from foreign countries. Here in Missouri, we believe in strengthening families and encouraging adoption. By placing additional barriers between couples who want to adopt and children who need loving homes, Senate Bill 267 is quite simply out of step with these basic values.

In other words, it could further complicate the process couples face when adopting children from foreign countries that have legal systems that are inconsistent with ours.

The bill, which doesn’t mention adoptions directly, could open the adoption process up to unnecessary challenges, critics say.

From 1999 through 2011, the most recent year of available data, Missouri families have adopted 5,852 children born outside of the U.S., Nixon also notes.

Religious Right historian Bill Federer stopped by the 700 Club today to discuss his columnarguing that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was “using [Saul] Alinsky tactics” in her response to the attack on the US compound in Benghazi and hoped to engender a “hurried rush for Americans to give up their free speech rights.”

During the interview with Pat Robertson, Federer said “Hillary [was] pulling back defense troops” and suggested that a “stand down” order given to a four-person support team came from Obama administration officials in either the White House or State Department.

However, the order actually came from the military, specifically Special Operations Command Africa, and it was given because the team would not have been able to reach the compound in time and were needed to secure the airport for evacuation. Even a top Republican aide in the House confirmed that there was no way the special operations team could have changed the outcome.

But Federer won’t let these facts get in the way of his argument that Clinton deliberately allowed the Benghazi attack to occur (or botched the response) as part of an Alinsky-inspired plot to impose Sharia law around the world.

h/t: RWW

But is it true? Let’s take a look at several issues and how both mainstream liberals and mainstream conservatives respond. I will be adding links to the conservative side to forestall the usual “Straw man” complaint.

1. Abortion: Can a woman abort a fetus and if so, up to what stage of development?

Liberals – Currently, there is no way to know when a fetus/zygote becomes a  person with the same moral weight as a “post-uterine” individual. In the absence of anything more solid than, “That’s how I feel about it,” liberals are willing to let the choice belong to the woman up to the point of viability. No one is comfortable with a 30 week abortion except under dire circumstances.

Conservatives – Not only have they declared that a single celled zygote is the same as a 10 year old child but have tried to pass laws to allow civilians to kill abortion providers and arrest women suspected of trying to induce a miscarriage.

Who is more extreme?

2. Religion in school – Should religion be promoted in school through teacher-led prayer and religious iconography or should schools be “religion neutral?”

Liberals – They would prefer to keep religion out of schools so no one religion is promoted over others in a country with literally hundreds of different faiths and sects (or none at all). This way, no one is ostracized or pressured.

Conservatives – They want Christianity, only Christianity and a particular brand of Christianity (No Catholics or Mormons!) taught in schools. At the same time, they do not want objective and verifiable science taught because it runs counter their very specific brand of fundamentalist Christianity. No evolution and no six billion year old Earth.

Who is more extreme?

3. Banning religion – Should the United States pass laws against unpopular religions in direct contradiction of the First Amendment?

Liberals - Militant atheists, not all of whom are liberals, talk about banning religion but they are a minority and no lawmaker has tried to seriously do this.

Conservatives – Conservatives talk about banning Islam all the time and have passed several “anti-Sharia” laws.

Who is more extreme?

4. Guns – Does society have the right to limit certain kinds of firearms and accessories like semi-automatic assault rifles, extended clips and fully-automatic machine guns while requiring all purchases of guns to be subjected to a background check to weed out criminals, the mentally ill, potential terrorists, etc.?

Liberals - Militant gun control proponents would like to ban all guns like many other industrialized countries have done with no ill effect. They are a minority and no lawmaker has tried to seriously do this. Liberals, in general, believe that background checks will reduce gun crime and banning certain kinds of guns and accessories will reduce, but not eliminate, the ability of killers to commit mass murder.

Conservatives – They have suppressed gun control laws so much that anyone can buy almost any gun at anytime with no oversight whatsoever and want to continue to do so. Conservative lawmakers have pushed laws to allow guns in churches, pre-schools and bars that serve alcohol. Some towns have mandated that every household MUST have a gun. They even want people just released from mental health facilities to immediately be able to buy a gun as well as convicted violent felons. They believe more guns make them safer in direct contradiction to evidence that show states flooded with guns have a high level of gun violence.

Who is more extreme?

5. Marriage – Can the definition of marriage be expanded to include homosexuals? 

Liberals – Considering marriage used to be prohibited between blacks and whites and nothing bad happened when we changed it, liberals would like for people to be able to marry the person they love regardless of their sex.

Conservatives – They insist that marriage has remained unchanged for centuries despite all evidence to the contrary. They also insist that same sex marriage is no different than bestiality and pedophilia despite it being between two consenting adults.

Who is more extreme?

6. Voting – Should we require citizens to obtain special ID in order to vote?

“Big government” Liberals – Everybody should be able to vote with a minimal amount of interference.

“Small government” Conservatives – Everyone should be forced to have “Voter ID” that costs time and money to get in order to fight wide-spread (but strangely impossible to find) “voter fraud.” Curiously, if you ask these same people if guns should be subject to the same kinds of rules to combat the well established tens of thousands of gun deaths and hundreds of thousands of gun crimes a year, they get very upset at this “infringement” on their “freedom.”

Who is more extreme?

7. The President – Does the office of the President of the United States deserve unquestioning respect and obedience in a time of war?

“Totalitarian” Liberals – No. No president should have carte blanche to wage war in our names or be immune to criticism. The right to to petition the Government for a redress of grievances is in the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights. Yet, anyone that criticized President Bush in any way, including about about non-war related policies, was labeled “traitors” by conservatives for “not supporting the president in a time of war” as if he were the God-Emperor of Arrakis.

Conservatives – During the very same war in which Bush was not allowed to be criticized, President Obama has been accused of being a secret Muslim from Kenya, a Nazi, a Communist, a Socialist, a homosexual, a gangsta, a traitor, a terrorist and racial slurs have been tossed around like confetti at a KKK gathering. The calls for impeachment haven’t stopped since almost his first day in office.

Who is more extreme?

8. Taxes – How should the broken tax code be fixed?

Liberals – We want tax loopholes closed for the rich and corporations and for them to pay what they actually owe. Hiding money in tax havens should be aggressively discouraged with confiscation and jail time (just like the rest if us face when we dodge our taxes). A modest tax hike on billionaires wouldn’t be so bad, either but not terribly necessary if the previous steps are taken.

Conservatives – They want to pay no taxes at all (but not a penny to be taken from their Social Security and Medicare) because they’ve been taxed enough already despite having lower taxes than at any point in the last 30 years..

Who is more extreme?

9. Rhetoric – Whose rhetoric displays a disconnect from reality and/or violence?

Liberals – We yell about the banks stealing our money with bailouts and being “Too big to fail,” getting money out of politics, the rich not paying their taxes, no more warmongering, no more rape, no more discrimination, respecting women’s rights, feeding the poor and hungry, stopping Climate Change and freedom of, and from, religion.

Conservatives – While they happen to agree with liberals about the banks, getting money out of politics and no more warmongering, they also say that liberals are violent thugs that are planning on putting conservatives into concentration camps, regularly talk about secession, revolution, Second Amendment remedies, shooting liberals and pray for Obama’s death.

Who is more extreme?

10. Rape – Is rape…rape?*

Liberals – Yes. It doesn’t matter if violence, drugs or coercion were used. If the sex was not consensual, it’s rape.

Conservatives – Well, it depends. Was it legitimate? A Gift from God? Did she get pregnant? Was it forcible? Was her vagina shredded by the rape? If not then it wasn’t “real rape.”

*I’m leaving out all of the slut shaming and “she was asking for it” because that is a product of rape culture and is almost entirely independent of political affiliation. While it is more prevalent among conservatives it’s not remotely confined to them. I’m not even sure they represent a majority in this regard.

Who is more extreme?

Now, conservatives will complain that I’m “misrepresenting them” or “using straw man arguments.” This is why I included all of the links to actual quotes from actual mainstream Republicans or conservatives. These are not fringe beliefs for the right. This is what their elected officials and media representatives say. When a conservative uses the most extreme of left wing positions (They want to ban all guns!), they have to find a blog no one has heard of or random Facebook comments to support their accusation. It certainly isn’t a part of mainstream liberal ideology.

h/t: Justin Rosario at AddictingInfo.org

Recently GOP released an internal assessment of losses in 2012 elections, possible causes and recommendations. Though the report did state that party has been losing base with the minorities and many other groups, the response from the party was to “deliver the message better”. It seems to me that party has not understood the root causes of their losses in elections, less favorability in the nation and declining voter base. I became a US citizen in 1986, and voted as Republican till 2004. Since then I have been increasingly dissatisfied with GOP’s relationships with the Muslims in USA. The Islamophobic rhetoric, though not exclusively restricted to Republican Party, has been consistently increasing over years.

Muslims mostly identify with GOP due to conservative values, and up till 2000 used to vote in greater numbers with Republican Party. In 2000 national elections, George Bush was endorsed by Muslim organizations and over 70% voted for the party. Many of President Bush’s supporters give credit to Muslims in Florida for the win in the state, leading to White House. Last year about 4% Muslims voted for GOP. Over 40% of American Muslims view themselves as independent voters, 7% identify themselves as Republicans and rest are affiliated with Democratic Party. Over last decade there have been more Muslim voters added, as the second generation has become adults and more immigrants have joined the pool. The Muslim voters’ ratio has dropped dramatically, but the Party has not taken any constructive steps to improve the relationships or even look into the causes.

The anti Muslim zeal increased over the last 2 years. American Muslims are becoming accustomed to bracing themselves for increasing Islamophobia during election years for political gains. The hearings by Representative Peter King (NY) on radicalization of Muslims in America were mainly airing anti Muslim sentiments. Many Muslim organization and individuals who could have given positive reports about American Muslims were not asked to testify in front of the committee. Law enforcement officials denied that there were major extremist Muslim groups in USA. Over 20 states introduced legislations, mostly Republicans to ban “Sharia law”. According to our constitution we cannot have foreign laws; the legislators very well knew that Sharia law cannot be and is not being implemented. But to appease their base and get political gains among the public they chose to waste their time and efforts on this nonexistent issue. Only thing they succeeded were in inflaming the anti Muslim feelings. According to CAIR in last 2 years 78 bills or amendments were moved in the country interfering with practices of Muslims; 73 of these bills were moved by Republicans. The voters at large did reject this message, as in last year’s election 4 out of 11 congressmen who were the most proponents of anti Muslim bias lost their seats.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), along with four Republicans colleagues alleged that Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton had ties to Muslim Brotherhood. This was based on pure speculations and Islamophobia. Some Republican leaders including Senator McCain did rebuke the comments but Rep Bachmann has not toned down her Muslim bashing. Herman Cain’s comments that he would require Muslims to take” a loyalty oath” in his cabinet were an insult to all Muslims who are hard working, productive members of the society. The remark was even more disheartening coming from Mr. Cain, who himself is a minority and has known the struggles of African Americans over years. Mitt Romney gave his tacit approval to the anti Islamic message during the campaign, while jogging our memories about difficulties faced by Mormons in the past.

President Obama has been “accused” of being Muslim and even his citizenship has been questioned. General Colin Powell aptly answered to this question of him being possibly a Muslim, “So what if he was”. Every born American irrespective of his/her faith, race or ethnic background can dream of becoming US President.

h/t: Ghazala Hayat at STLtoday.com

Fresh from speaking at CPAC, Pamela Geller appeared yesterday on TruNews with End Times fanatic and anti-Obama conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles where she implied that President Obama may be a Muslim.

She said that Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly, where he explicitly opposed blasphemy laws, actually was supportive of blasphemy laws and especially took issue with Obama’s line that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.”

Geller told Wiles that Obama needs to “chill” and that Muhammad “may be your prophet but he’s not mine.”

Just today in her WorldNetDaily column, Geller called Obama an “Islamophile” and an “anti-Semite” who is “attempting to render parts of Jerusalem judenrein.”

She also told Wiles that Al Cardenas, the head of the American Conservative Union and the host of CPAC, met with her to discuss her complaints that the conference is “enforcing the Sharia.” Geller said that while Cardenas may not be part of the alleged Islamist takeover of CPAC, ACU board members Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan are “absolutely” allies of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Geller even maintained that “the media is aligned with the jihad force” and “self-enforces the Sharia,” agreeing with Wiles’ belief that “the left is foolishly aiding the Islamic infiltration of America.”

H/T: RWW

This is what I see as the most hilarious episode to come out of CPAC 2013. A panel hosted by Breitbart.com known as “The Uninvited” Panel (Because even the regular crackpot Republicans didn’t want them there) had quite a moment when Orly Taitz wanted to discuss Obama’s citizenship. “Creeping Sharia” Islamaphobe Pamela Geller wasn’t about to have any of it, after all, she was there to discuss the threat of Creeping Sharia. (Oddly, many of the people raising the alarm about Sharia share the anti-homosexual, misogynist, religiously intolerant attitudes of Sharia.)

Orly Taitz, better known as the “Birther Queen,” was rebuked by blogger Pamela Geller during Saturday’s panel, introduced by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) as “the world experts on global jihad.”

Geller snapped at Taitz after she asked multiple questions about President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

“I think there’s enough substance on this panel, I mean how many topics can you handle,” Geller said, “Inappropriate. really.”

Taitz gathered up her things in a huff, perhaps to go in search of more like-minded individuals.

Also, not seen in this video (However if I find footage, you’ll be the first to know) when Rep. King introduced the panel he told the group that gathered that the FBI has “scrubbed out” derogatory references to “Islam” or “Muslims” because their Muslim advisers told them they had to. And of course he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to talk illegal immigrants, who he referred to as “undocumented Democrats.”

Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey was also on hand, and warned of Islam’s “need to impose sharia on the world,” noting that “there has been a systematic purging of references to Islamism, lest offense be given to Muslims.” He then asked where is the government finding out what will offend Muslims, groups like CAIR and ISNA, “both of which are branches of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“The vast majority of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims adhere to a view of their religion that agrees on the need to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on the world,” he said.

My mind finally numbed a bit through all of the commentary from speakers with all of the details of how the Muslim Brotherhood is ruling the world — or maybe it’s just America — it was hard to keep up with all of the spinning. But, there was a bit more humor with crying over being called “The Uninvited,” and Pamela Geller’s tears over her “truth is the new hate speech” drivel.

h/t: Diane Sweet at Crooks and Liars

Incensed that she was not invited back to CPAC, the annual gathering of conservative activists, Pamela Geller took to The Janet Mefferd Show to once again claim that she is a victim of Sharia law. She accused CPAC of “enforcing the Sharia” and “blasphemy laws” as a result of “the influence of what can only be described as Muslim Brotherhood facilitators or operatives like Suhail Khan and Grover Norquist.”

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW

On a conservative radio program over the weekend, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) went on an anti-Muslim tirade, making accusations about Muslims that ranged from the offensive to the absurd. Within her long conversation with host Jan Markell and co-host Eric Barger, Bachmann suggested that Americans read Islamic study materials to learn about Muslims’ supposed plot to conquer Western civilization, comparing the tactic to reading Adolf Hitler’s infamous book, Mein Kampf.

During the interview, Bachmann said she had proof that there was creeping sharia law — or, Islamic law — infiltrating the United States. That proof? A letter signed by groups of Muslim-Americans asking the Department of Homeland Security to stop distributing anti-Muslim materials:

BACHMANN: That’s right. That’s why we need to know what their belief system is; we need to know what they truly believe. That’s why the most important thing a person could do in WWII was to read the book that the leader of Germany wrote.

BARGER: Mein Kampf.

BACHMANN: Because he laid out very clearly what his intention was, he wasn’t hiding it, the Islamist does the same thing. They do not hide it, they lay it out very clearly. But what we’ve never seen before is the United States aiding and abetting that goal.

h/t: Annie-Rose Strasser at Think Progress Security

We know that when Michele Bachmann speaks, even fact-checkers can’t fully cover all of her dubious and debunked claims in just a single article. Now that Bachmann is completely engrossed in promoting her latest conspiracy theory focusing on the supposed Muslim Brotherhood “penetration” of the US government, she took to The Janet Mefferd Show to misrepresent President Obama’s address to the United Nations General Assembly to claim that Obama is not only refusing to defend the freedom of speech but may be even actively backing the curtailment of speech rights in favor of Sharia law.

The congresswoman told Mefferd that Islamic countries may be using “riots and terrorism” to ensure that “Sharia law will dominated over our United States Constitution.” “Our president either doesn’t know what’s happening or he’s playing along with what their goal is,” Bachmann said. “Either option is very dangerous for the free speech rights and the protection and safety of the American people.”

She also failed to mention that when Obama criticized “those who slander the prophet of Islam” it was part of a larger chastisement of religious bigotry, including against desecration of images of Jesus Christ, the destruction of churches and Holocaust denial.

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW

Back in May we reported on an amazing conspiracy theory that seemed to bring all of the far right’s fears about Obama, Islam, environmentalism and immigration together: essentially, President Obama is going to collapse the world economy, causing Muslim immigrants to flood the U.S. and give Obama the opportunity to settle them on land seized under Agenda 21 and establish Sharia law. But that was just scratching that surface.

Author Avi Lapkin has been making the rounds in churches warning audiences of the nefarious plot, and is frequently cited as a “scholar” by the American Family Association’s news division, OneNewsNow. Yesterday he appeared on Today’s Issues with the AFA’s Tim Wildmon and Marvin Sanders, who said that Lipkin “shines the light of truth on what’s going on in the Middle East” and “has a clear picture” of “what’s going on in the Middle East.”

So what did Lipkin tell them? After once again warning of the Obama-immigration-Agenda21-sharia plot, Lipkin said that the Muslim population in the U.S. isn’t 0.6 percent, as official estimates assert [pdf], but actually 10 percent because the government is flying millions of Muslims into the country on charter jets. Once they come in, they marry American women turn them in “baby factories for Islam.”

LIPKIN: I’m predicting that the globalist one world government insists on getting that oil and to do that you have to overthrow the regime. The problem is not the nuclear threat, the problem is the regime. Fourthly, I think Obama’s a Muslim, he’s a Sunni Muslim on orders from Saudi and the Saudis are afraid to get their heads chopped off by the Shiite Iranians, therefore the Saudis are commanding Obama to terminate the Shiite regime. All of this is in my teachings. So the four reasons for war with Iran, the nuclear threat and democracy are the least of the reasons. 

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW

THE BIKE IS IMMACULATELY polished and gleaming in the late afternoon South Florida sun. A bald eagle in full squawk graces the gas tank, white stars checker the front fender, and a tattered red-and-white-stripe motif designed to evoke Old Glory covers the rest of the body. Any hint of grime or dust is purely aesthetic; 22 years in the military teach a man to clean up after his mess. The helmet sits right-side-up on the saddle and is adorned with two rows of jagged teeth and a bright red tongue, like the nose of an old Spitfire; two US Army logos; six bullet-hole decals; and, down at the bottom, the signature of its owner, who has just roared up: retired Lt. Colonel Allen B. West.

It’s mid-April and momentarily West, the Republican congressman from Florida’s 22nd District—an imaginatively carved Tetris piece stretching from West Palm Beach to the outskirts of Fort Lauderdale—will take the stage at the Palm Beach County Tax Day Tea Party in Wellington. He’ll call the tax on tanning salons enshrined in the Affordable Care Act “racist,” the president “an abject failure,” and, directing his assembled battalion’s attention to a small group of placard-bearing liberal protesters, ruminate on his sanity: “They say Allen West is the craziest person that ever set foot on the House floor! Let me tell you who’s the craziest person to truly ever set foot on the House floor. That’s President Barack Hussein Obama.”

SINCE THUMPING DEMOCRATIC REP. Ron Klein at the polls in 2010, West has taken dead aim at the lily-livered sissies he believes are running America into the ground—and the Islamic extremists he’s convinced are poised to seize control. He has suggested that Democratic leaders—whom he calls “chicken men“—”get the hell out of the United States of America”; considers drivers with Obama bumper stickers “a threat to the gene pool”; and says black Democrats are trying to keep his fellow African Americans “on the plantation”—and he’s the “modern-day Harriet Tubman” helping them to escape.

Of the 94 freshman congressmen who came to Washington in January 2011, none captured the id of the tea party movement—and the ire of the left—as perfectly as West, an Army veteran who retired in 2004 after firing his gun, Jack Bauer-style, past the head of an uncooperative Iraqi detainee. Reborn as a conservative icon, he is the torch carrier for a political culture and a region where, more than anyplace else in the country, radical Islam is the existential threat lurking around every corner.

LET’S GET THIS OUT OF THE WAY: Allen West does not regret a single Red-baiting, Obama-hating thing that he’s said during his career in political office. “I’m not like the president,” he snipes. We’re in the lobby of the Palm Beach Synagogue, a pastel-colored building squarely in the middle of an upscale, palm-tree-lined community, where a man’s affluence is measured by the height of his hedges.

West, wearing a green camouflage yarmulke and the same leather Rolling Thunder vest, has just held forth in the sanctuary for 45 minutes on debt and taxation and radical Islam, sprinkled, here and there, with token Westisms like “Katie, bar the door!” I was told by his staff we’d have a few minutes to chat after the event, but now he’ll have to keep it short because he needs to take a leak.

“My parents raised me very conservatively, and I think that’s what you have to understand,” he says when I ask about his upbringing. “That’s what you have to understand”—it’s a phrase West uses a lot, usually followed by a discourse on the Koran (he says every American should read it) or the Progressive Era.

He grew up in a middle-class household in Atlanta, the son of a World War II veteran. His parents, Herman and Elizabeth, were both Democrats, but with a conservative bent. They taught him to read the stock index in the Journal-Constitution and to scorn the thought of a handout. “The Democrat party was once upon a time a very conservative group,” he says. West is uncompromising, right down to his grammar. Every sentence is a proxy war in the larger struggle between patriots and the “people in this world that just have to have their butts kicked,” and as a consequence he never—never—gives the Democratic Party the dignity of an adjective.

By the time he was assigned to a base 20 miles north of Baghdad in 2003, Lt. Colonel West had command of 650 troops; he was tasked with making inroads with the locals. “There I’d be, an inner-city kid from Atlanta sitting on the floor like Lawrence of Arabia, with 30 Arab sheiks,” he later told the New York Times. That August, West received intelligence about a potential plot on his life. A week later, the convoy he was scheduled to be traveling in was ambushed. A few days after that, West arrested an Iraqi policeman, Yehiya Kadoori Hamoodi, who he believed had inside knowledge of the plot.

In testimony at an Army hearing that November, West would state that he had watched four of his subordinates beat the detainee, delivering blows to Hamoodi’s chest and legs. Finally, he stepped in. West took the detainee outside, pulled out his 9 mm, instructed Hamoodi to place his head in a barrel full of sand, and fired into the barrel. The detainee screamed, called for Allah, and started to talk. But the house Hamoodi suggested searching yielded no leads; he was released 45 days later and was never charged with a crime.

The high-profile case effectively ended West’s military career. He avoided a court-martial but was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and was banished to the rear in a noncombat role. West didn’t regret a thing: “If it’s about the lives of my soldiers at stake, I’d go through hell with a gasoline can.”

FORT LAUDERDALE, DECEMBER 30, 2008—for South Florida’s anti-Muslim activists, this was their Lexington and Concord. It came in the middle of the Israeli conflict in Gaza, and a group of Muslim, pro-Palestinian demonstrators held a protest across the street from a smaller band of Israel supporters. “It was the day that the jihad was uncovered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida,” says Tom Trento, founder of the United West, a group dedicated to exposing radical Islam in the United States and Europe. And it was also the day that West, who had just lost his first congressional race against Klein, solidified himself as a hero of the cause. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the video,” Trento says.

Trento is referring to the shaky footage he shot. In it, you can hear him muttering periodically that things aren’t looking good. After an imam leads the demonstrators in their evening prayers, some of the younger Muslim men cross the street to confront the counterprotesters. Trento was bracing for violence. “And then, out of the shadows, there comes Allen West,” he says. West joined forces with a handful of police officers and, like a modern-day Charles Martel, pushed back the Muslim demonstrators.

There’s Walid Phares, a leading scholar of “stealth jihad” and a onetime political adviser to a Lebanese Christian paramilitary group, who taught Trento at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton (and currently advises Mitt Romney on foreign policy). Joe Kaufman, a friend of West’s who runs the anti-Islam group Americans Against Hate, lives in Broward County; Joyce Kaufman (no relation), a local conservative radio host, campaigned against the grocery chain Publix for including the Islamic New Year in its wall calendar and was—briefly—tapped by West to be his chief of staff. Citizens for National Security, based out of Boca, works to raise awareness of Islamic propaganda in school textbooks, among other places. (In 2011, West invited the group to Capitol Hill, where its leaders announced they had a list of 6,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood currently living in the United States but could not release it due to security concerns.) Reverend O’Neal Dozier, a black pastor who’s a GOP fixture, preaches out of a Pompano Beach church where West has spoken from the pulpit; Dozier’s claim to fame, at least as far as Islam is concerned, came in 2006, when he protested the construction of an Islamic center by handing out comic strips attacking the Muslim faith. The list goes on.

WEST DIDN’T JUST ride the tea party’s wave in 2010—in many respects, he is the movement’s political avatar. Three years ago, West’s second congressional campaign was catapulted forward at a tea party rally where he captured activists’ hearts with one of his trademark fiery (critics would say unhinged) speeches aligning their cause with that of the American Revolution. “As a great man said in December 1776: ‘These are the times that try men’s souls. When the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from his duties.’ If you’re here to shrink away from the duties, there’s a door—get out,” he told activists during his last campaign. “But if you’re here to stand up, to get your musket, to fix your bayonet, and to charge into the ranks, you are my brother and sister in this fight.”

PATRICK ERIN MURPHY, the 29-year-old vice president of an environmental cleanup firm, would like nothing more than to make West a congressional has-been.

He “really just spews hatred,” the political novice who’s running against West says when we meet at his Palm Beach Gardens campaign headquarters in April. “He has no problem lying. He has no problem distorting the truth. There’s no place for that in our country.”

“And,” he adds, “the latest one about the progressive caucus being communists—you can’t say something like that and not expect consequences.” Palm Beach Democrats have adopted West’s jabs as a badge of honor, literally; volunteers at the opening of Murphy’s campaign office wrote “communist” on their name tags and addressed each other as “comrade.” “I never saw so many communists in the same room,” Murphy joked to supporters.

It will be a close race, though money won’t be an issue for West. One benefit of regularly accusing the opposition of high treason is that it opens up wallets across the country. He had $3.3 million on hand after the first quarter, an enormous sum for a House race. Murphy, meanwhile, has so far banked nearly $2 million—more than almost any other Democratic House challenger in the country.

h/t: Tim Murphy at Mother Jones

Today, Texas Republican primary voters selected Ted Cruz as their candidate to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). Cruz, a former Solicitor General of Texas and law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, is among the nation’s most skilled Supreme Court advocates. Yet his considerable intellect is rivaled by his very poor judgment. Here are just five of the most revealing windows into Cruz’ Tea Party worldview:

1) Ted Cruz Believes George Soros Leads A United Nations Conspiracy To Eliminate Golf: In 1992, President George H.W. Bush joined the leaders of 177 other nations in endorsing a non-binding UN document known as Agenda 21. This twenty year-old document largely speaks at a very high level of generality about reducing poverty and building sustainable living environments. Nevertheless, Cruz published an article on his campaign website claiming that this non-binding document is actually a nefarious plot to “abolish ‘unsustainable’ environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads.” To top it off, Cruz lays the blame for this global anti-golf conspiracy at the feet of a well-known Tea Party boogieman — “The originator of this grand scheme is George Soros.”

2) Ted Cruz Wants To Gut Social Security: In an interview with the Texas Tribune Cruz labeled Social Security a “ponzi scheme” and outlined a three-step plan to gut this essential program. Cruz would raise the Social Security retirement age, cut future benefits, and implement a George W. Bush-style plan to privatize much of the program.

3) Ted Cruz Wants To Party Like It’s 1829: The Constitution provides that Acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land,” and thus cannot be nullified by rogue state lawmakers. Cruz, however, co-authored an unconstitutional proposal claiming two or more states could simply ignore the Constitution’s command and nullify the Affordable Care Act so long as they work together.

4) Ted Cruz Is An Islamophobe: At a campaign event earlier this month, Cruz touted another of the Tea Party’s favorite conspiracy theories, claiming that “Sharia law is an enormous problem” in this country. Although it is common for far right politicians to claim that American law is somehow being replaced with Islamic law, these claims have absolutely no basis in reality.

5) Ted Cruz Campaigned On How He Helped Texas Kill A Mexican: Cruz’s very first campaign ad encouraged GOP primary voters to support him because he helped make it easier for Texas to kill an “illegal alien.”

h/t: Ian Millhiser at Think Progress Justice

I’d call Frank Gaffney an intellectual bomb-thrower—but, he’s not an intellectual. Instead, he treats politics and national security the way James Holmes treats movie-theater patrons: don’t worry about aiming, just shoot to kill. Fortunately for his victims, Gaffney mostly fires duds, such as the ones he’s been shooting lately at Huma Abedin, an aide to Hillary Clinton, whom Gaffney calls an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Abedin, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, is also married to former Representative Anthony Weiner (of Weinergate), who was one of the most pro-Israel members of Congress while in office, which (as Jon Stewart pointed out) makes Abedin deep-cover, indeed!

Gaffney, of course, is the extreme-right-wing chief of something called the Center for Security Policy. As RightWeb and SourceWatch report, Gaffney is involved in, connected to, or cited by anti-Muslim crazies who oppose mosque-building, generated volumes of conspiracy theories, and he was even cited by the Norwegian terrorist who killed scores of campers in 2011. How far right? For years I’ve watched Gaffney’s Islamophobic and ultrahawkish antics, including a long-running battle he’s had with Grover Norquist, the taxophobic head of Americans for Tax Reform. Years ago, while writing a profile of Norquist for The Nation, I watched Gaffney denounce some of Norquist’s conservative allies for (gasp!) wanting to cut waste, fraud and abuse out of the Defense Department budget. Never! Shrieked Gaffney. More to the point, Gaffney blistered Norquist for his ties to (gasp!) Muslims, including the fact that Grover married a Palestinian Muslim. Gaffney’s constant refrain is expressed most neatly by a report published by CSP called: “Shariah: The Threat to America.” 

But his latest broadside against Huma Abedin, by all accounts an accomplished, middle-of-the-road public official, may take the cake—in this case, the nut cake. Gaffney found willing accomplices in Representative Michele Bachmann and a coterie of fellow ultraright members of the House of Representatives, and their absurd diatribe against Abedin led John McCain, the Arizona Republican, to denounce Bachmann et al.

Does this have any lasting political meaning? Well, since large numbers of Republican-leaning voters consider Barack Obama to be a Muslim, and since even some Democrats in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia agree, the answer might be: Yes. Unless Gaffney and his ilk are once and for all exposed as kooks.

Joining Bachmann’s errant jihad were four other less-than-stellar members of the House: Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Thomas Rooney and Lynn Westmoreland.

Censure and/or expel Michele Bachmann from Congress!

Link to Bachmann’s challenger, Jim Graves: jimgraves.com

h/t: Robert Dreyfuss at The Nation