The new King of Crazy

Rep. Peter King is about to launch his House Homeland Security hearings into the alleged threat of radicalized Muslims in America, or as I like to call it, the latest in insane McCarthyesque witch hunts. I suppose I should have titled the post, the new King of making me crazy. To start, there's the usual GOP hypocrisy. King was a huge supporter of I.R.A. terrorism in the UK. In the mid-80s "he declared, 'If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.'”

And the whole premise of his hearings is based on purely fabricated data.

Most pernicious, he has claimed that American Muslims have generally refused to cooperate with law enforcement agencies on terrorism cases. He has cited no evidence for this, either, but a study issued last month by Duke University and the University of North Carolina found just the opposite. The American Muslim community has been the single largest source of tips that have brought terror suspects to the attention of authorities, the study found. (It also found that the number of American Muslims found or suspected to be part of terror operations dropped substantially in 2010.)

It's the pure opportunism that really rankles. His pandering to bigots puts us in real danger solely to benefit his own ambitions. As the editorial put it, "His refusal to tone down the provocation despite widespread opposition suggests that he is far more interested in exploiting ethnic misunderstanding than in trying to heal it."

Meanwhile, The Caucus wonders if Obama can avoid the issue:

[T]he new team at the White House seems eager to keep Mr. Obama at a distance from the debate, perhaps mindful that offhand commentary by the president during the first half of his term drew the White House into media frenzies that proved difficult to exit quickly.

Not that difficult to figure out why:

And the intensity of the coverage at those moments says as much — if not more — about the news media as it does about Mr. Obama or the White House.

Yes. Yes it does. Wish someone could figure out a way to fix that problem. I'm thinking break up the corporate media monopolies and let journalists do their jobs again, instead of chasing ratings with gossip disguised as news. If anybody has a better solution, I'd love to hear it.