Their letter to the Sergeant at Arms ends by saying, “if you find that CAIR is a security threat, we ask that you take the appropriate security measures.” As we asked in an earlier post, if CAIR is a security threat and the FBI and DOJ know all about it, why haven’t they done more then simply stop working with CAIR and writing a single letter to a handful of Senators?

They also sent a nearly identical letter to the DOJ (except that someone hit the grammar check button and they remembered you always underline the title of a book) requesting a summary of the “evidence” discovered about CAIR during the Holy Land Foundation trial (where no CAIR staff were even charged with anything).

It is important to note that this list of so-called “co-conspirators” includes over 300 groups. It is highly unusual for a list like this to be released to the public, though not surprising that it came from Alberto Gonzales’s DOJ.

Neil MacFarquhar wrote in the NY Times:

Technically, the prosecution can introduce statements made by any individual or organization named as an unindicted co-conspirator without such statements being dismissed as hearsay. Those on the list have not been charged with anything, but they are concerned that the label of unindicted co-conspirator will forever taint them, particularly if the Holy Land group is convicted, and that they will have no legal recourse.

Clearly this affair is another example of the Bush administration abusing a technicality for political purposes. Put 300+ Muslim organizations on this list so they can introduce any little piece of un-related conversation into court without having to produce an actual witness (remember, this case featured Israeli secret police testifying anonymously…), then put the list out to the public to cast these groups as guilty by association.

Hal Weatherman, have you any response to blog?

Phil Burger: 'I keep a 'barrow in my office.'

But it seems Berger didn’t actually read the surveys before wheeling them in during a press conference in which he attacked Perdue’s tax policies, among other things. When Perdue’s staff skimmed 1,000 or so of the surveys, they found comments that may have given Berger second thoughts.

“I am embarrassed to be associated with this organization. Your tactics are disgusting and you’re going to lose a generation of voters,” was one, Perdue spokeswoman Chrissy Pearson told the News.

“Stop wording questions so geared up to get the answers you want and start wording them to actually find out the people’s opinion, not just confirm your own,” read another.

Talking Points Memo

The Senate Guru has a painful list of Eight Ways Richard Burr Displayed Poor Judgment, a Lack of Integrity, and Utter Contempt for Others.

Highlights:

2) Richard Burr Lied About Supporting Additional Funding for the Successful “Cash for Clunkers” Program

Burr’s words:

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said he would back additional funding for the [Cash for Clunkers] program as well, though he originally opposed the “Cash for Clunkers” bill. He said he would favor the additional funding as long as it doesn’t increase the budget deficit.

The proposed $2 billion would come from money already appropriated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and will not further the national deficit.

Burr’s action:

Burr (R-NC), Nay

Burr’s result: liar.

Actually, they are all highlights. Check it out for links and citations and whatnot. The Guru calls him Richard “Bank Run” Burr. heh.

Update
From Creative Loafing Charlotte, John Grooms writes:

Sen. Richard Burr kept on digging his political grave yesterday as he responded to criticism of his vote against a ban on giving federal funds to companies that require arbitration in sexual assault cases. Incidentally, all four GOP U.S. senators who are women voted for the ban. When N.C. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, a probable contender for Burr’s Senate seat next year, lambasted the senator for “voting against protecting rape victims working for contractors in Iraq,” Burr lashed back. Through a spokesman, Burr said the amendment “does not protect women” (huh?), and besides – I swear this is an actual reason they gave for voting against the ban – it “prevents contractors from getting paid.” Like we should give a damn if a contractor that treats women the way KBR treated Jamie Leigh Jones gets paid.

Burr’s spokesman also said the arbitration agreements are nonbinding in criminal acts, and the government could still prosecute sexual assault suspects. So, Richard, you’re saying it’s OK for taxpayer-funded contractors to force employees who’ve been raped to go through an arbitration process, because “the arbitration agreements are nonbinding in criminal acts”? And then what? After the arbitration process, they should go to a policeman and have the rapists arrested, and then go through a whole other trial “process”? I guess as long as the contractors are getting paid, it’s OK to put women through an extra layer of hell. You’re not making sense, senator, and frankly, it’s hard to fathom how a politician could be this tone-deaf.

Dick Burr. Richard “Bank Run” Burr. Senator Richard “Get Yours & Get Paid” Burr. All just variations on a theme…

Crazy like a... Virginia Foxx

Fairness in Representation Act will ensure fair congressional apportionment

This week I introduced the Fairness in Representation Act, legislation that requires the Census Bureau to determine the number of illegal immigrants in the United States.

The decennial census is not currently required to collect data regarding the legal status of immigrants in the U.S. This means that states with high numbers of illegal immigrants stand to gain additional seats in Congress in the once-every-10-years process of reapportionment. This also means that the law-abiding residents of states with low numbers of illegal immigrants stand to lose seats to those states with high numbers of illegal immigrants.

That is not fair and equal representation in Congress.

Congress should not ignore the way that illegal immigration is altering how many seats each state has in Congress. This legislation will help equip the country with the necessary data to distribute seats among the states without the process being unfairly affected by the inclusion of illegal immigrants.

The census is a lynchpin in the proper functioning of America’s democratic and legislative process. Ensuring that the final tally is accurate and fair will mean everyone’s vote counts equally when congressional districts are re-distributed and redrawn every ten years.

The Constitution says absolutely nothing about representation being based on the number of citizens in a district or state. Let us all open our hymnals to Article 1, Section 2:

Section 2 – The House

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five and Georgia three.

When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.

The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

The bold sentence is the key. It says nothing about citizens. It does of course contain the racist 3/5′s clause. This was changed by the 14th Amendment, Section 2:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Once again, the nation did not choose to make this dependent on citizens.

Why? Because the government will have costs associated with everyone living in the country, whether they are here “legally” or not. The census numbers are used to determine virtually every kind of funding available through all levels of government, so we need to know how many people live around the country, not just how many citizens.

Adding this question about citizenship status to the census will cause those groups already suspicious of the government to have even less reason to participate, thus changing the outcome and funding priorities. Furthermore, it’s unnecessary. A fairly accurate count of American citizens can be made by cross-referencing Social Security records, voter registration, and birth records throughout the country. You take that number, subtract it from the total the census produces and you will have a general count of non-citizens living in the United States.

Now, that would be way too expensive and time consuming to do, involving all manner of privacy laws, but it would be more accurate. Adding that question to the census will not be accurate and will actually lower the accuracy of the entire effort by causing many more people to simply opt-out of it altogether. In fact, this kind of legislation is intended as an attack on immigrant communities – legal ones included – to make them more passive and less politically active.

Even if it does pass, it will most likely be found to be un-Constitutional and struck down. In any case, the 2010 Census is already under way, so it wouldn’t even be applied until the 2020 Census by which time Virginia Foxx will be in forced retirement and any law like this will have been repealed in favor of actual science-based counting practices.

Free Speech Radio News has this report with a bit from Virginia:

U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from Banner Elk, is warning that the Democrats will try to sneak health-care reform through Congress.

It’s the political equivalent of slipping a 747 through a toll booth, but Foxx told 1240 3WC, “Hometown Christian Radio,” in Wilkesboro that she thinks Democrats will put health-care reform inside another piece of legislation that lawmakers would find difficult to oppose.

“They’ll put a bad thing with a good thing,” Foxx said, “and I’ve talked about this before. Sometimes you get bills that are 50 percent good and 50 percent bad. So you have to decide is it better to vote yes and say, ‘I voted for the good even though the bad came along,’ or do you vote no and say, ‘I couldn’t vote for the good because there was so much bad?’”

From Benjamin Niolet, Lynn Bonner and Mark Johnson, newsobserver.com

Hal Weatherman is not Bob Dylan.

Hal just wants to be understood. Like Dylan and “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” Look folks, if this was “some partisan squabble on health care or tax policy or any other mundane yet daily battle on Capitol Hill [Hal] wouldn’t really care, but this is different”. So let’s take a look at his arguments…

1. CAIR is a front group for and has documented ties to the terrorist organization HAMAS. This is not my opinion, or the opinion of Sue or the other members that held the press conference. This is the stated fact by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Hal goes on to cite a letter sent to Sen. Jon Kyl on April 28, 2009 from the FBI. In it, the FBI claims that CAIR is linked to HAMAS. The entire thing is premised within the Bush administration’s case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. That case, the largest brought by the government against an entity accused of raising money for terrorists, was fraught with problems. The NY Times’ Leslie Eaton wrote:

The prosecution said the committees were controlled by Hamas and contributed to terrorism by helping Hamas spread its ideology and recruit supporters. The government relied on Israeli intelligence agents, using pseudonyms, to testify in support of this theory.

In Israeli courts, “secret evidence” is routinely introduced and shown to the judge only. The defence often does not even have a chance to examine this evidence, though it can and is used against them. Israeli “evidence” was produced in this trial without any serious explanation of where it came from or how it was obtained. And remember, though we have all gotten used to a return to some normalcy after Barack Obama’s election, the Bush years did not provide the most trustworthy Justice Department.

But it is more important to note that CAIR was never found guilty of any wrongdoing. This letter in fact does not make that claim! It merely says that the Bush-era FBI decided to terminate contacts with CAIR based on “evidence” from the Holy Land Foundation trial that did not prove sufficient to convince the jury of very much guilt. This “suspending” of contacts between the FBI and CAIR is nothing more than the Bush administration’s sour grapes.

None of the convictions that were ultimately secured from the case had anything to do with CAIR. Hal repeats the claim that the Executive Director of CAIR was linked to HAMAS, but if so, why no indictments? Why no trials? If the FBI has evidence that CAIR is funding terrorists, why doesn’t the government shut them down?

The answer is, because they aren’t doing anything illegal and Sue Myrick and her ilk just want to use them to scare people.

Hal basically says that, through CAIR, HAMAS is placing interns on Capital Hill:

To our critics, I simply ask the following: Are you suggesting that you would not have notified anyone in authority if you discovered HAMAS was trying to place people in congressional offices dealing with national security issues? That is the logical conclusion to be drawn by your criticism.

First, that’s not a conclusion, it’s a hypothetical question. This is based on the earlier claims which have little merit and rely on one letter from the FBI. He makes it out like Sue Myrick is the one lone woman standing in the gate protecting us from the blood-thirsty HAMAS hordes. As if having an intern on Capital Hill would even make a damn bit of difference…

But Hal remains inside a world where the hordes are at the gates and it only good conservatives like Sue and W standing in the way. How can you call them bigots when they are just trying to stop the “infiltrators” from CAIR planning to undermine our republic from within? Nevermind that the author of the book Sue wrote the forward to, touts in the press conference, and forms the basis of this entire controversy has repeatedly written that President Obama is a Muslim, regularly refers to him as “Hussein”, and has “faked” being Muslim in the past.

Anyway, on and on it goes. The only piece of “evidence” Hal can manage to bring up is that one letter. He purposely leaves out the context of the trial and the fact that CAIR was never charged or found guilty of anything. He may argue that Sue is not a bigot and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. however, the people she is consorting with on this one are bigots who have convinced themselves that the Christian world, led by the USA, is under siege by the Muslim world (which the book’s author regularly refers too as well), and we must purge ourselves of their threat to remain free and rich and… whatever.

Hal Weatherman, climb on board.

She hasn’t actually turned her request over to the Sergeant At Arms. That’s Sue, such a tease.

Glenn Greenwald has more on this affair.

Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., and Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., hold a news conference on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009, to "make public a national security threat on Capitol Hill," relating to the Muslim group CAIR, which they claim has been planting interns in Congressional offices. Photo via Newscom

Charlotte’s favorite lady writes, “Government officials need to stop hiding behind political correctness…” We whole-heartedly agree. ‘Cause we would like to have advertisers someday.

Watch the awesome press conference that kicked off this Muslim Mafia Marathon:

Adam Linker asks the important question, “Has Sue Myrick ever worked on Capitol Hill?“

And follow the story here:
http://washingtonindependent.com/63946/the-house-gop-anti-cair-press-conference
http://washingtonindependent.com/63945/myrick-shadegg-broun-franks-congresss-anti-muslim-bigot-caucus
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/gop_uses_work_of_intern_spy_to_accuse_muslim_group.php

Let’s get it started with this video of her running to avoid answering a silly question about Rush Limbaugh and football.