Keith Ellison has spoken at a convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Yet ISNA has actually admitted its ties to Hamas, which styles itself the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Justice Department actually classified ISNA among entities “who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood.”
In 2008, Ellison accepted $13,350 from the Muslim American Society (MAS) to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The Muslim American Society is a Muslim Brotherhood organization: “In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation’s major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members.” That’s from the Chicago Tribune in 2004, in an article that is now carried on the Muslim Brotherhood’s English-language website, Ikhwanweb.
Also, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) raised large amounts of for Ellison’s first campaign, and he has spoken at numerous CAIR events. Yet CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.
If Clinton Democrats can’t stomach Ellison, they can vote for Thomas Perez. In July 2012, Perez — then the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, was asked by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ):
Will you tell us here today that this administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?
Perez could have simply answered yes, and maybe even cited the First Amendment. Instead, Perez refused to answer the question directly. Franks persisted, ultimately asking it four times.
Perez at one point responded that it was a “hard question.” He simply refused to affirm that the Obama Justice Department would not attempt to criminalize criticism of Islam.
So there’s the choice for Democrats: a Congressman who has taken money from an organization dedicated in its own words to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within” or a foe of the First Amendment right to the freedom of speech.
That’s today’s Democratic Party.
“Democrats sweat Clinton vs. Sanders rift,” by Gabriel Debenedetti, Politico, January 16, 2017:
The Hillary Clinton vs. Bernie Sanders rift is bubbling up in gubernatorial primaries. It’s pulsing through the race for Democratic National Committee chairman, and shaping state party leadership contests from Hawaii to Maine….
The Clinton vs. Sanders narrative is already coloring the DNC chair race, despite the strenuous efforts of each of the declared candidates to downplay it: the candidates are clear in their stump speeches about their wish to avoid a redux of their primary fight, and some campaigns have drawn up internal memos and circulated talking points describing how their candidate bridges the divide.
The Sanders wing’s preferred candidate, Rep. Keith Ellison, has repeatedly gone out of his way to frame himself as the “unity” candidate against his main opponent, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, a top Clinton surrogate in 2016 who has been flexing his own progressive muscles to appeal to the party’s left wing.
To Ellison — one of Sanders’ first endorsers before becoming a prominent Clinton surrogate — the common reading of his race as a Clinton-Sanders proxy war has been a source of frustration, according to people who have spoken with him in recent weeks.
As such, the Minnesotan and his team have worked to make “unity” a buzzword in his campaign, and his courtship conversations with DNC members are often peppered with his descriptions of work he did for Clinton as well as Sanders. To underscore the point, the raft of endorsements he unveiled in the early days of the campaign was packed not only with Sanders backers, but prominent Clinton surrogates like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. Perez, who drew mention as a dark horse vice-presidential pick for Clinton, often avoids talking about the 2016 race on the trail, preferring to spin the conversation forward — his campaign website, for example, contains no mention of Clinton or Sanders, instead leaning on President Barack Obama, a universally popular figure in the party. Asked about parallels between the DNC race and the Democratic presidential primary, Perez begged off, declining to use the names Sanders or Clinton.
“This race is about the future of the Democratic Party, how we move forward together to address the existential threats, frankly, that Donald Trump presents to this nation,” he said. “I’ve worked very closely with everybody in every wing of the party because I’ve fought a lot of fights side-by-side with them. The big tent of the Democratic Party is our greatest strength.”…