Many of them seem genetically unable to condemn the latest round of suicide bombers blowing up buses and restaurants without adding a bite about the plight of the Palestinians or the unequal distribution of wealth or some other nonsense about “root causes.” Americans generally bristle at that kind of equivocation in the face of grandmothers being blown to smithereens by plastic explosives wrapped in ball bearings. See Rudy Guliani and bin Alaweed (sp).

I must admit that I know next to nothing of Ellison and was pretty impressed with the class and grace with which he handled the whole Goode thing. Maybe he’s not cut from the same cloth as these people who can’t mention the Holocaust without noting that 20 million other people also died in WWII, so why get hung up on the Jews. But I doubt it.

The implication coming out of blogs and news reports is that Jefferson cherished his Qu’ran and glowingly approved of its contents. This seems a very dubious proposition.

That’s your inference, but it’s not my implication.

I had a professor at UNC who was Jewish and taught various history and religion courses. He had a copy of Mein Kampf on his bookshelf. Does that mean he endorsed it?

Shouldn’t that thing be in a museum somewhere covered by a glass case so no harmful contaminates can get ruin the Koran.

Matt: That’s exactly right. This thing is kept under lock-and-key (like everything else) in the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress. You better believe they didn’t take this “lending” lightly. There was an interesting piece about it yesterday on NPR’s All Things Considered.

The muslims ARE taking over

Well, naturally. There has been a rise in the interest in the Islamic religion since 9/11, and not all Muslims are violent, jihadist nuts, just like not all Christians are charismatic, fundamentalist flakes.

The more you understand a thing, the less there is to fear from it.

Somewhere along the way in these discussions, someone brought up Rep. Ellison in the context of Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan does not scare me. In fact, I admire his vision and will to create a better, more productive, and powerful cultural structure for African-Americans. Our society has visited upon that community a wholesale repression of respect for their contributions to our national whole as individuals and as a cultural group. In contrast, Farrakhan has spent his life giving them a foundation on which they can be proud to stand. A person may not like that his morals are Islamic, but no one can deny that he has been one of the most effective motivators the American black community has ever produced.

Even if Ellison turned out to be a duplicate Farrakhan–and he probably won’t because he seems much less angry in his attitude and much more diplomatic in his public skill-set–that would not be necessarily a bad thing.

Somehow, I had the Senate on my mind — duh! Thanks for pointing it out …

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-010407ambassador,0,4906353.story?coll=la-home-headlines

I wonder if he “uses” the Koran in anyway?

What on earth are the righties going to say about this?

Sean

Perhaps it might be a six year term for Mr. Ellison someday. That’d be neat.

And don’t you think the good people from Rep. Ellison’s district are getting a little pissed that dipwits like Goode think they are stupid terrorist lovers? They’d probably send him back just as a big F you to people like Goode.

But six years is a long way away.