Public Radio Asks Democrat if He Associates With Terrorists

When I first heard that this man, Minnesota state representative Keith Ellison, was poised to become the first Muslim to serve in Congress, sadly, I thought, Wow, Republicans are gonna have a field day going after this guy.

Well, now that Mr. Ellison has won his primary the gloves have come off and the hits have begun:

In the first of three Fifth Congressional District debates scheduled for today, Republican Alan Fine repeated his personal attacks on state Rep. Keith Ellison, the DFL nominee.

Fine accused Ellison of joining a "hate group" interested in "the destruction of our country." The words, a reference to the group Nation of Islam, came in response to Minnesota Public Radio Midday host Gary Eichten’s question about why Fine thinks Ellison is "unfit" for Congress.

[...]

Ellison has said his work with the Nation of Islam extended to organizing for the Million Man March in the mid-1990s. "I’m proud I was involved with the March," he said, adding that he wants to talk about issues, but if "this is the way it’s going to be. Fine. I can take it."

Eichten asked whether he associates with terrorists. "Completely untrue. … It’s because I’m about peace, because I’m about health care coverage and raising the minimum wage."

All right, so we’ve come to expect this sort of cowardly attack from Republicans, but it’s another thing all together when members of the so-called liberal media do the hatchet job for Republicans.

Sen. Allen, Racist?

This is just reprehensible:

Sen. Allen again apologizes for remark, regrets use of Confederate flag
By WARREN FISKE, The Virginian-Pilot
September 13, 2006

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. George Allen offered a broad apology Tuesday for failing to grasp how his use of words and symbols, including the Confederate flag, could be offensive to racial minorities.

The remarks came at a time when Allen, a Republican in a tough re-election fight this year, is facing national criticism and declining popularity after a widely perceived racial slur about a Democratic campaign worker last month.

During a luncheon speech before about 300 black educators attending a national conference for officials from historically black colleges and universities, Allen again apologized for the remark. Then, for the first time, he expressed regret for his longtime infatuation with the Confederate flag.

"The point is, symbols matter, they should matter, and this is something that I wish I learned a lot earlier," Allen said. "Even if your heart is pure, the things you say and do and the symbols you use do matter because of the way others may take them."

Allen wore a Confederate flag pin on his lapel in his 1970 graduation picture from a Southern California high school. He hung a noose from a plant in his Charlottesville law office in the 1980s and a Confederate flag inside his home. As governor in the mid-1990s, he alienated some by signing a resolution that designated a Confederate history month in Virginia but did not acknowledge the evils of slavery.

Allen, 54, said he did not see racial overtones in the Confederate flag. He said he was a rebellious youth and viewed the banner as a "symbol against authority." As a history major at t he University of Virginia in the early 1970s, he said, he also began to see the flag as a proud heritage symbol for those with ancestors from the South who fought in the Civil War.

How this man, Republican Sen. Allen of Virginia, still doesn’t “get it” is completely incomprehensible.

Here’s the kicker:

The weird thing is, as Ed Kilgore pointed out back in April, it’s not even like George Allen is even a southerner. As Ed wrote then, "Allen’s whole cowboy-boot-wearing, tobacco-chewing, country-music-loving Southern Man routine was something he cultivated during his formative high school years in the hyper-exclusive Southern California community of Palos Verdes."

And here’s the incident that prompted Republican Sen. Allen to issue his latest apology — now, keep in mind that the guy that Sen. Allen refers to as "maccaca" is an American of Indian descent:

Rumsfeld the Appeaser

From The Wallstreet Journal:

Rumsfeld Handshake Proves Popular
September 8, 2006, 4:24 pm

With Defense Secretary Rumsfeld making “appeasement” the big buzzword of the month, the George Washington University’s National Security Archive notes that its single most-downloaded file is now the once-classified batch of documents, photos and video documenting Rumsfeld’s handshake and meeting with Saddam Hussein in December 1983. President Reagan had sent Rumsfeld to Baghdad to help restore diplomatic ties with Iraq and aid Baghdad in its fight against Iran.

“Rumsfeld meeting Saddam has now far outpaced the previous winner, which was Elvis meeting Nixon,” says Thomas Blanton, director of the archive, which collects and posts significant declassified documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

Rumsfeld last week warned of a rise of Islamic fascism and said that people should not fall into the trap of appeasement as did those who tried to accommodate the Nazis in the 1930s. The remarks led many pundits to compare Rumsfeld’s 1983 meeting with Hussein to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s meeting with Adolf Hitler in 1938. One liberal hawker of political posters is now offering one that features photos of the two meetings with the caption “Appeased to meet you… hope you guessed my name.” – Neil King Jr.

You can see more of Rumsfeld’s "moral confusion" here.

Right Wingers and ABC

And still the right-wing sympathizers think that there’s such a monster as the so-called liberal media:

“Path to 9/11″ Maker Has Evangelical Ties
By Justin Rood – September 8, 2006, 2:39 PM

The director of ABC’s controversial “Path to 9/11″ docudrama has ties to an evangelical Christian group whose goals include “transform[ing] Hollywood from the inside out.”

Update: This story just gets murkier and murkier… just who is behind this fake "docudrama"? Max Blumenthal, over at HuffingtonPost.com, has some answers:

“The Path to 9/11″ is produced and promoted by a well-honed propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical religious right group founded by The Path to 9/11′s director David Cunningham that proclaims its goal to “transform Hollywood” in line with its messianic vision.

Before The Path to 9/11 entered the production stage, Disney/ABC contracted David Cunningham as the film’s director. Cunningham is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman. He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth With A Mission (YWAM). The young Cunningham helped found an auxiliary of his father’s group called The Film Institute (TFI), which, according to its mission statement, is “dedicated to a Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and Televisionindustry.” As part of TFI’s long-term strategy, Cunningham helped place interns from Youth With A Mission’s in film industry jobs “so that they can begin to impact and transform Hollywood from the inside out,” according to a YWAM report.

Great Finding: The Most Important Image Ever Taken

This is a great video of “the most important image ever taken”:

And here’s a link to a "zoomable" version of the image mentioned in the video and a link to the image.