DNC Votes To Continue Obama's Fundamental Transformation Of The United States Of America
March 1, 2017
Perez and Ellison: Leading The DNC Into Constitutional Jihad
New DNC Chair Calls Trump ‘Worst President In The History Of The U.S.,’ Invokes ‘The Resistance.'
Hmm, Trump is worst president in history with only one month of service with a volunteered salary of one dollar?
Obama said . . . you could keep doctor (lie), that doctors cut off patient's feet for more profit (lie), a pain pill is better for you than a Pacemaker (lie), didn't know Bill Ayers (lie), returned more illegal immigrants from [inside] America than any other president (lie), admitted Communist Frank Marshall Davis mentored him (true), admitted Davis was friends with his grandfather (true), said he didn't believe in same-sex marriage (lie), said he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America (true), said that anyone who "felt" to be a male or a female could use whatever bathroom they chose in an education facility or that facility would lose federal funding (true), deaths of four Americans in Benghazi was due to a video (outright lie), and other false statements.
Plus A Collection Of Obama’s Lies, Scandals, and Corruption (A Partial List)- iPatriot
"Perez, who was labor secretary under Barack Obama, was chosen over liberal Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison at the DNC meeting in Atlanta. Ellison was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and his supporters expressed their displeasure after he failed in his bid to lead the DNC and lost to Perez." - TheBlaze
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Bio Of Thomas Perez
New Chairman Of The DNC
Served in the Department of Justice (DOJ) during the Bill Clinton administration
Was appointed by President Barack Obama to be Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ's Civil Rights Division
Greatly expanded DOJ's prosecution of alleged hate crimes, which he depicts as a predominantly white-on-black phenomenon
Views “disparate impact”—i.e., instances where particular policies affect whites and nonwhites unequally—as prima facie evidence of discrimination
Depicts America as a nation rife with injustice against groups such as women, nonwhite minorities, and immigrants
According to the American Spectator, "Perez has overseen most of the unprecedentedly naked politicization of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division."
Became U.S. Secretary of Labor in July 2013
The son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Thomas Edward Perez was born October 7, 1961 in Buffalo, New York. He earned an A.B. in international relations and political science from Brown University in 1983, a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1987, and a Master of Public Policy from the JFK School of Government, also in 1987.
From 1987-89 Perez was a law clerk for Judge Zita Weinshienk of the U.S. District Court in Colorado. In the early 1990s he served as a prosecutor, and later as deputy chief, in the Civil Rights Division (CRD) of Bill Clinton's Department of Justice (DOJ). From 1995-98, Perez worked as special counsel to Senator Edward Kennedy.
In 1996 Perez was instrumental in facilitating the passage of the Church Arson Prevention Act, a bill founded on the falsepremise that African American churches were being targeted at a disproportionately high rate by arsonists.
From 1998-99, Perez returned to the DOJ's Civil Rights Division as deputy assistant attorney general. In this role, he helped establish the Worker Exploitation Task Force, which sought to improve the working conditions of illegal aliens. Moreover, he worked to eliminate the disproportionate assignment of black and Hispanic students to special-education programs; to increase the number of such students in "gifted and talented" programs; to prosecute federal civil-rights cases involving police misconduct and hate crimes; and to eliminate racial profiling by law-enforcement.
From February 1999 until the end of the Clinton administration, Perez served as director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
As a member of Maryland's Montgomery County Council in 2003, Perez (who served on the Council from 2002-06) called for the state to recognize the notoriously fraud-prone matricula consular ID cards issued by Mexican and Guatemalan consular offices as a valid form of ID for illegal immigrants in the United States—even though allowing such IDs could give illegals easier access to government-funded social services. That same year, he sponsored a Montgomery County bill aimed at giving illegal immigrants access to banks.
Perez has also supported a policy that would permit illegal immigrants who attend college in their state of residence to qualify for the same discounted, in-state tuition rates that are available to legal residents.
In 2004 Perez went before the Maryland state legislature to testify against a number of immigration-enforcement bills, including one that sought to prevent illegal immigrants from acquiring driver’s licenses, and another proposing that people be required to prove their citizenship before registering to vote. Moreover, Perez opposed efforts to study and document the financial burdens that illegal immigrants placed on the Maryland state budget.
In 2006 Perez wrote a scathing Mother Jones piece denouncing an amendment authored by Oklahoma Republican senator Tom Coburn that would have repealed a Clinton-administration executive order requiring doctors to provide translators for non-English-speaking patients. Accusing Coburn (who is a medical doctor by training) of having “exhibited a distressing disregard for the doctor-patient relationship,” Perez said that the proposed amendment (which ultimately did not pass) would “undermine meaningful communication between doctors and patients, thus relegating those who do not speak English to a lower rung of our health care system.” Coburn disagreed vehemently:
“After all my years of practicing medicine, I take offense at someone stating that I have a ‘distressing disregard’ for the doctor-patient relationship. I have treated numerous patients who do not speak English and found ways to communicate with them. Often these patients have family members who speak some English or they find other ways to communicate. There is no reason to burden health-care providers with the expense of having to provide services in languages other than English.”
From 2001 to 2007, Perez was a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law. He has also worked as a part-time faculty member at the George Washington University School of Public Health.
In 2007 Perez ran unsuccessfully for the office of Maryland attorney general. From 2007-09, he served as secretary of licensing and regulation in the Maryland Department of Labor.
In 2008 Perez worked on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and then served on the transition team after Obama’s electoral victory. On March 31, 2009, President Obama nominated Perez to be Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ's Civil Rights Division (CRD). The U.S. Senate confirmed Perez in October 2009.
Upon taking office, Perez declared that CRD's mission was to help those Americans who were “living in the shadows”—a reference not only to illegal immigrants, but also to: “our Muslim-American brothers and sisters subject to post-9/11 backlash”; “communities of color disproportionately affected by the subprime meltdown”; “LGBT brothers and sisters ... forced to confront discrimination”; and “all too many children lacking quality education.”
From the start of his work with the Obama administration, Perez pledged to greatly expand DOJ's prosecution of alleged hate crimes, which he depicts as a predominantly white-on-black phenomenon. He also made it clear that he viewed “disparate impact”—i.e., instances where particular employment- or education-related policies affect whites and nonwhites in different ways—as prima facie proof of discrimination. (An example would be when a company makes its hiring or promotion decisions based on exam scores, and whites as a group score higher than nonwhites.) Consider the following facts:
On April 23, 2012, Perez's Justice Department sued the city of Jacksonville, Florida, claiming that its use of written tests to determine promotions in its fire department had "resulted in a disparate impact upon black candidates," who registered passing grades at significantly lower rates than their white counterparts. "This complaint should send a clear message to all public employers that employment practices that have the effect of excluding qualified candidates on account of race will not be tolerated," said Perez.
This was just one of numerous Perez/DOJ lawsuits designed to force various municipal fire (and police) departments to do away with written tests for membership. In a case against the New York Fire Department, Perez and DOJ argued in favor of what amounted to strict racial quotas favoring blacks, even if they scored as low as 30% on their qualifying exams.
Also under the rubric of "disparate impact" theory, Perez believes that bankers and mortgage lenders who reject the loan applications of blacks at a higher rate than the loan applications of whites are akin to Klansmen. Such lenders, says Perez, discriminate "with a smile" and "fine print," but their subtle brand of racism is "every bit as destructive as the cross burned in a neighborhood."
In Perez's view, compensatory payments to plaintiffs who win judgments in civil-rights cases should go not only to the actual victims of discrimination, but additionally to “qualified organization[s]” approved by the Justice Department. Such a policy enables DOJ to funnel cash into the coffers of activist groups that share the presidential administration's political agendas.
In 2009, Perez and CRD pressured several universities to discontinue an experimental program whereby students could purchase their textbooks in digital formats which they could read via the Amazon Kindle, because the Kindle—notwithstanding its text-to-voice feature (for the narration of books)—was not fully accessible (in its menu options) to blind students. Until the Kindle rectified this injustice, said Perez, universities that made their textbooks available on the e-reader would be investigated for possible violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
That same year, Perez and CRD launched an investigation of Maricopa County, Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for his strict enforcement of federal immigration laws. This investigation grew out of a February 2009 demand—by Democratic Representatives John Conyers, Zoe Lofgren, Jerrold Nadler, and Bobby Scott—that the Justice Department look into allegations of Arpaio's “discriminatory” police practices toward illegal aliens. Though the accusers had no evidence of any wrongdoing by Arpaio, CRD initiated its inquiry within a month. In 2010, Perez would leadthe Obama Justice Department in filing a lawsuit against Arpaio.
Also in 2010, Perez and CRD led the fight against an Arizona law deputizing state police to check the immigration status of any criminal suspects who they believed might be in the U.S. illegally.
In January 2010 Perez told AFL-CIO leaders that if Martin Luther King Jr. were still alive: "he would continue his quest for economic justice, for all Americans to be able to access the great wealth and promise of our nation"; he would urge our nation's leaders to move forward on health care reform"; and he would call "for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.” Perez then proceeded to depict America as a nation rife with injustice and maltreatment against many groups of people. For instance, he said:
"[W]omen [are] still fighting for pay equity in the workplace."
[D]iscrimination persists -- both blatant discrimination and the dangerously subtle kind -- in so many of our institutions."
"[N]ewcomers to our country face bigotry and hate because of the language they speak, the clothes they wear, the color of their skin, or the accent in their voice."
"Crosses are still burned in yards across the nation's heartland. Acts of violence are still committed because of an individual's skin color, or because of who they love, or because of where they come from."
"Individuals with disabilities are still too often denied access to those basic services that the rest of us take for granted."
On April 20, 2010, Perez testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the subject of his efforts to combat discrimination in housing, money lending, employment, and police work. For a brief summary of his testimony, click here.
Perez consistently emphasized CRD's “critical work” of “monitoring federal, state, and local elections across the country to ensure that voting takes place free of unlawful intimidation.” But in June 2010, J. Christian Adams, a five-year DOJ veteran, resigned to protest the “corrupt nature” of DOJ's dismissal of a case involving two Philadelphia-based members of the New Black Panther Party who had intimidated white voters with racial slurs and threats of violence on Election Day, 2008. Adams cited Perez and Thomas Perrelli (the associate attorney general) as the two DOJ officials most responsible for dropping the case. In July 2010, Adams gave damning public testimony about how Perez and other Obama DOJ officials believed that “civil rights law should not be enforced in a race-neutral manner, and should never be enforced against blacks or other national minorities.”
In September 2010, Christopher Coates—Voting Section Chief for the DOJ—testified to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and corroborated Adams' assertion that the Department had routinely ignored civil rights cases involving white victims. For more than a year, Perez had denied the Commission's requests to hear Coates' testimony and had instructed Coates not to testify. But in September 2010, Coates finally chose to go public with his story and asked for protection under whistleblower laws. (For the full text of Coates' testimony, click here.) In a similar vein, an inspector general report released in March 2013 stated that Perez believed voting rights laws did “not cover white citizens.”
Perez played a key role in opening investigations of several large urban police departments for systematic civil-rights abuses such as harassment of racial minorities, false arrests, and excessive use of force. In 2011, for instance, Perez's CRD initiated a high-profile push to reform the New Orleans Police Department; "pattern and practice" investigations of police departments in Newark and Seattle; and a preliminary investigation of the Denver Police Department. These actions were consistent with what Perez had stated in September 2010: "In case you haven’t heard, the Civil Rights Division is once again open for business. There were very few [pattern and practice] cases during the prior administration." On another occasion (in April 2010), Perez had stated: "Criminal prosecutions alone, I have learned, are not enough to change the culture of a police department." As of March 2013, Perez had initiated 17 probes of police and sheriff's departments across the United States—more probes of that type than CRD had ever previously conducted under any individual's leadership.
In 2011, Perez led a DOJ lawsuit against Alabama's recently passed anti-illegal immigration law (HB-56), similar to Arizona's 2010 law.
In July 2011, Perez addressed a luncheon meeting of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), a pro-amnesty immigration group with which he has long had a close relationship. In his remarks, Perez praised NCLR's work and expressed gratitude for its steadfast support of President Obama's agendas. He also lauded the organization's members as valuable "change agents" and "serial activists" who "will [help] move America forward." And he characterized opponents of immigration reform as racists: "It’s undeniable that what else we see out there in America is an absolute headwind of intolerance, and it’s a headwind of intolerance that has been manifested in many different ways shapes and forms."
In August-September 2011, PJ Media published Every Single One, a 12-part series of exposes revealing that, without exception, every attorney hired by Perez's CRD had a leftist or Democrat activist pedigree. When PJ Media initially asked to see the resumes of these hires, the Justice Department refused to provide them. Thus PJ was forced to sue Attorney General Eric Holder in federal court under the Freedom of Information Act, and thereby gained access to the data it sought. To view this 12-part series, click here.
Nearly two years later, in March 2013, the American Spectatorreported that "Perez has overseen most of the unprecedentedly naked politicization of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division," as evidenced by the fact that "every one" of the 113 people his CRD had hired for supposedly non-political civil-service positions were "demonstrably liberal activists." Moreover, said the report, Perez had "insisted on personally approving each of these new hires."
By Perez's reckoning, voter ID laws are racist constructions calculated to deprive nonwhites of their voting rights. Indeed, Perez led the Obama administration’s assault on voter ID laws during the run-up to the 2012 elections.
In December 2011, for instance, the Justice Department blocked a new South Carolina law requiring voters to present valid identification at their polling places on election day. Claiming that the law discriminated against minority voters, Perez wrote: “Although the state has a legitimate interest in preventing voter fraud and safeguarding voter confidence … the state’s submission did not include any evidence or instance of either in-person voter impersonation or any other type of fraud that is not already addressed by the state’s existing voter identification requirement.” Perez further contended that the law violated Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, because 8.4% of the state’s registered white voters lacked photo ID, compared to 10% of nonwhite voters.[1]
Perez also led a 2012 CRD lawsuit that succeeded in overturning Texas's voter ID law.
In late May 2012, Perez and DOJ ordered the state of Florida to halt its efforts—which were already underway—to verify the identity and eligibility of the people listed on its voter rolls. DOJ explained its actions by saying that it had not yet been able to verify that Florida's efforts “neither have the purpose nor will have the effect of discriminating on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.” In a letter (dated June 11) to the Florida Secretary of State, Perez charged that Florida was violating the National Voter Registration Act and the Voting Rights Act. “Please immediately cease this unlawful conduct,” he wrote.
Florida was not compliant with DOJ, however. “We have an obligation to make sure the voter rolls are accurate and we are going to continue forward and do everything that we can legally do to make sure than ineligible voters cannot vote,” said Chris Cate, a spokesman for Florida secretary of state Ken Detzner. “We are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot. We are not going to give up our efforts to make sure the voter rolls are accurate.” Earlier that year, Florida election officials had identified some 53,000 still-registered voters who were deceased, and another 2,600 who were non-citizens. In fact, state officials estimated that the total number of non-citizens on Florida's registered-voter rolls was as high as 182,000. Nevertheless, DOJ filed suit against Florida on June 12, 2012. "Because the State has indicated its unwillingness to comply with [DOJ's] requirements, I have authorized the initiation of an enforcement action against Florida in federal court," said Perez.
In early August 2012, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Arizona), a member of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, asked Perez: "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 refused to answer, four separate times. Breitbart.com provided some context for this:
"Last October, at George Washington University, there was a meeting between DOJ officials, including Perez, and Islamist advocates against free speech. Representatives from the Islamist side included Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).... The leader of the Islamist [side] was Sahar Aziz, an Egyptian-born American lawyer and Fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a Muslim advocacy group based in Michigan. At the meeting, the Islamists lobbied for: cutbacks in U.S. anti-terror training; limits on the power of terrorism investigators; changes in agent training manuals; [and] a legal declaration that criticism of Islam in the United States should be considered racial discrimination. Aziz said that the word 'Muslim' has become 'racialized' and, once American criticism of Islam was silenced, the effect would be to 'take [federal] money away from local police departments and fusion centers who are spying on all of us.'"
Perez raised no objection in response to Aziz. (For a video of Perez's exchange with Rep. Franks, click here.)
In early 2013, Perez told Congress that his CRD had filed "a record eight lending-related federal lawsuits" in 2011, resulting in eight settlements that netted "more than $350 million in relief to the victims of illegal lending practices." In many of those cases, Perez used disparate impact analysis to advance the notion that if banks were rejecting white and nonwhite loan applicants at different rates, they were, by definition (and regardless of intent), engaging in discrimination that violated the Fair Housing Act. For example:
In February 2012, Perez had used his influence to prevent the U.S. Supreme Court from hearing Magner v. Gallagher, a case where local slumlords from St. Paul, Minnesota were accusing that city of racism for enforcing its housing code. St. Paul, in turn, challenged the notion (embraced by Perez) that racial discrimination can be proven simply by presenting disparate-impact statistics rather than actually ascertaining intent or examining the specifics of each case. As the Court date drew near, St. Paul officials, confident of a victory, publicly declared that they would prove that the Fair Housing Act actually makes no explicit allowance for disparate-impact analysis. Perez, afraid that the Court might rule disparate impact illegal, spoke to representatives of both St. Paul and the plaintiff and, according to the Wall Street Journal, "strongarm[ed]" them to withdraw the case so that he and the Justice Department could continue filing such lawsuits. The Ocean County Registerreports that "as a quid pro quo for withdrawing its case, Mr. Perez promised the city of St. Paul that Justice would make two pending False Claims Act cases it was facing go away," thereby saving the city "millions of dollars" in legal fees and settlement costs.
On March 18, 2013, President Obama nominated Perez to be the U.S. Secretary of Labor, replacing outgoing Secretary Hilda Solis.
In a May 2013 hearing before members of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, Perez testified that he could not recall ever having used his personal Verizon email account to conduct Justice Department business at his Takoma Park, Maryland home. This was an important matter because -- in the interests of transparency -- it is illegal for government employees to conduct government business on a personal email account. Perez was then confronted with emails showing conclusively that he had in fact conducted DOJ business on his home Verizon account, and he conceded their authenticity.
Under Perez, the DOJ repeatedly slow-walked efforts intended to help ensure that overseas military personnel (who tend to support Republican candidates by a wide margin) could exercise their voting rights. Meanwhile, Perez's division strove—without jurisdiction—to help felons (who overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates) regain voting privileges in a number of states.
During his tenure with CRD, Perez was a featured speaker at a number of events held by the American Constitution Society, telling its members that "your mission and ours [at CRD] share a lot in common."
Perez was confirmed as U.S. Labor Secretary by the Senate on July 18, 2013, and was sworn in five days later.
In August 2013, Perez, who has repeatedly called for increases in the minimum wage, stated: "The living-wage strikes that we’ve seen recently ... really stand for the proposition that nobody who works a 40-hour week should have to live in poverty. Time and time again, after the minimum wage has been raised, those sky-is-falling predictions have been disproved."
In a July 2014 speech he delivered to hundreds of black students at Howard University, Perez denounced the so-called "school-to-prison pipeline" that allegedly funneled large numbers of African American youth into the O.S. prison system without cause. To drive the point home, Perez stated that school authorities in Mississippi had recently had black high-schoolers arrested for infractions as small as wearing the "wrong color tie" or the "wrong color socks," or for "flatulence." "I’m not making this up," Perez assured. "This is Meridian, Mississippi, where we still see separate and unequal.... We thought we had made progress [but] this is America" today. Hoover Institution Fellow Paul Sperry subsequently revealed Perez's willful duplicity:
"[Perez] was making it up. Meridian Public School District students have never been jailed simply for breaking school dress code, as he implied. That would be false imprisonment. They have, however, been mildly disciplined for wearing the wrong uniform to school. Meridian, which is mostly black, has a strict dress code to prevent gang violence.... Perez conflated the circumstances, even though he knew better.... Perez made it sound as if Meridian were run by a bunch of white, racist Bull Connors. What he failed to mention is that the Meridian school superintendent, Dr. Alvin Taylor, and four of the five Meridian school board members are all black. So is the judge running the juvenile court.... Why would this Cabinet official [Perez] say [this] to an audience of black students? There’s only one explanation: To rile young African-Americans up about the specter of a still-racist America."
On February 25, 2017, Perez defeated Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison by a margin of 235 votes to 200, in a race for chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Perez's victory came in the second round of voting, after he had fallen one vote short of winning in the first round.
NOTE: [1] It is noteworthy that in 2005, the DOJ itself had approved a Georgia law with the same provisions and protections, and in 2008, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board that an Indiana law requiring photo ID did not present an undue burden on voters. Furthermore, South Carolina’s law explicitly addressed potential disenfranchisement by offering state-issued IDs free of charge, and free transportation to anyone who needed a ride to a location where a picture ID could be obtained. An extensive data review conducted by Department of Motor Vehicles Director Kevin Shwedo found that more than 900 deceased people had "voted" in recent elections in South Carolina, demonstrating that a voter ID policy could have been useful in South Carolina.
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Bio Of U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison
Named New Deputy Chairman Of The DNC By Perez
U.S. congressman from Minnesota
First Muslim elected to the U.S. House of Representatives
Supported Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam
Says that Farrakhan “is a role model for black youth,” “is not an anti-Semite,” and “is a sincere, tireless, and uncompromising advocate of the black community and other oppressed people around the world”
Spoke favorably of the high-profile murderers and leftist icons Mumia Abu Jamal, Assata Shakur, and Geronimo Pratt
Former steering committee member of the National Lawyers Guild's Minnesota chapter
Publicly defended former Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist Kathleen Soliah
Supported the activities of the anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011
Born in August 1963, Keith Maurice Ellison was raised as a Roman Catholic in Detroit, Michigan. At age 19, while attending Wayne State University, he converted to Islam because he perceived it to be a faith that “might inform social change [and] justice in society.” After graduating with a BA in economics in 1987, Ellison enrolled at the University of Minnesota Law School.
As a third-year law student in 1989-90, Ellison penned four columns for the Minnesota Daily under the name “Keith E. Hakim”:
(a) In a November 27, 1989 piece titled “Minister [Louis] Farrakhan Never Claimed to Be a 'Malcolm X',” Ellison laid out his views about racism:
“Racism means conspiracy to subjugate and actual subjugation. That means planned social, economic, military, religious and political subjugation of whites. It cannot be intelligently argued that the Nation of Islam is doing this. In fact, blacks have no history of harming or subjecting whites as a class. On the other hand, whites have it written into their very Constitution that blacks shall be considered three-fifths of a person for purposes of taxation and representation of their white owners. Their Constitution also makes provisions for the return of runaway slaves. Their constitution is the bedrock of American law; it’s the best evidence of a white racist conspiracy to subjugate other peoples.”
(b) In a November 30, 1989 column, Ellison wrote: “The news media prints only the most sensational bits and pieces, never the whole story. This leaves people believing that the Nation of Islam is some kind of black Ku Klux Klan, and they immediately dismiss all of its laudable work.”
(c) On February 2, 1990, Ellison published “Affirmative Action Does Not Make up for Past Injustice,” an article advocating slavery reparations as well as the creation of a geographically self-contained “homeland” for black people:
“Since no one but the WASP elite really appreciates affirmative action, I have a challenge for all fair-minded middle- and working-class white people: I will urge black people to abandon white-dominated, integration-oriented, give-away programs, if you urge white people to justly compensate black people for 250 years of slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow and 25 years of neo-Jim Crow.
“The settlement could be a straight cash transfer for all the black exploitation. This means just compensation for all the labor hours put in by the slaves and just compensation for all the intellectual and artistic property ripped off by all the Elvis Presleys and Pat Boones. It means compensation for all the money ripped off through sharecropping and just compensation owing to all the black athletes of yesterday, such as Jack Jefferson and Joe Louis. It means back payment of the ‘black tax,’ which is the price hike that ghetto merchants and pawnbrokers charge black consumers....
“Finally, blacks would have the option of choosing their own land base or remaining in the United States. Since black people toiled most diligently in the southeastern section of the United States, this land, quite naturally, would be most suitable. That means Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. Blacks, of course, would not be compelled to move to the black state, and, of course, peaceful whites would not be compelled to move away.”
(d) In one piece, Ellison defended the incendiary Nation of Islam spokesman and black supremacist Khalid Abdul Muhammad, and, as The Weekly Standardreports, spoke “in the voice” of Muhammad.
In February 1990, Ellison participated in sponsoring Kwame Ture (a.k.a. Stokely Carmichael) to speak at his law school on the subject, “Zionism: Imperialism, White Supremacy, or Both?”—a speech that proved to be deeply anti-Semitic.
After earning a Juris Doctorate in 1990, Ellison worked three years as a litigator with the Minnesota-based law firm Lindquist & Vennum. He then served as executive director of the Legal Rights Center in Minneapolis, which specialized in the pro bono defense of “low-income people and people of color.” After that, he took a job with the law firm Hassan & Reed Ltd. (also in Minneapolis).
During the 1990s, Ellison failed to pay all or part of his income taxes on a number of occasions. Consequently, the IRS filed liens against him and he eventually was forced to pay some $25,000 in back taxes. Ellison also ignored fines that he had incurred for parking tickets and moving violations so numerous that his driver's license was suspended multiple times.
In October 1992 Ellison publicly came to the defense of Sharif Willis, a convicted murderer and ex-convict who was now the leader of the violent Minneapolis-based Vice Lords gang. The previous month, four Vice Lord members had used Willis’s house as their headquarters for planning the murder of a local police officer named Jerry Haaf. At the trial of one of the killers, two witnesses implicated Willis in the plot. Willis himself was never charged, however, because law-enforcement authorities said they lacked sufficient evidence to convict him. Ellison helped organize a demonstration against Minneapolis police, where he denounced “the campaign of slander the police federation has been waging” against Willis. He also told the crowd that the police union was systematically trying to frighten white people in order to persuade the city to hire more officers and thereby strengthen the police union’s power base. In February 1993, while the trial of Officer Haaf’s killers was in progress, Ellison led a protesting crowd outside the courthouse in the chant: “We don't get no justice, you don't get no peace!” In February 1995 Willis was convicted in federal court for several drug and gun-related offenses, for which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In 1995 Ellison worked actively on behalf of the Nation of Islam. At a University of Minnesota rally to promote Louis Farrakhan’s highly anticipated Million Man March, Ellison, who organized the rally, appearedonstage with Khalid Abdul Muhammad, who delivered a thundering, racist diatribe.
That same year, when Qubilah Shabazz, daughter of the late Malcolm X, was indicted for conspiring to murder Farrakhan, Ellison organized a march on the U.S. Attorney's office in Minneapolis demanding that Shabazz be released, and alleging that the FBI itself had conspired to try to kill Farrakhan. In a November 6, 1995, column for the Minneapolis periodical Insight News, Ellison wrote under the name “Keith X Ellison” and condemned a Star Tribune editorial cartoon implying that Farrakhan was an anti-Semite. Ellison argued to the contrary, saying that “Minister Farrakhan is a role model for black youth”; “is not an anti-Semite”; “is a sincere, tireless, and uncompromising advocate of the black community and other oppressed people around the world”; and is regarded by “most black people” as “a role model for youth and, increasingly, a central voice for our collective aspirations.”
In February 1997 Ellison served as a local NOI spokesman (with the surname “Muhammad”) at a public hearing in connection with a controversy involving Joanne Jackson of the Minnesota Initiative Against Racism. Jackson, a supporter of Louis Farrakhan, was alleged to have said that “Jews are among the most racist white people I know.” Declared Ellison: “We stand by the truth contained in the remarks attributed to [Ms. Jackson], and by her right to express her views without sanction. Here is why we support Ms. Jackson: She is correct about Minister Farrakhan. He is not a racist. He is also not an anti-Semite. Minister Farrakhan is a tireless public servant of Black people, who constantly teaches self-reliance and self-examination to the Black community.”
Ellison first emerged as a candidate for public office in 1998, when he ran, unsuccessfully, for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party nomination for state representative as “Keith Ellison-Muhammad.” In an article on his candidacy that appeared in Insight News, Ellison was still defending Farrakhan: “Anticipating possible criticism for his NOI affiliation, Ellison-Muhammad says he is aware that not everyone appreciates what the Nation does and [he] feels there is a propaganda war being launched against its leader, Minister Louis Farrakhan.”
In 1998 as well, Ellison appeared at a public forum as a spokesman for NOI.
In February 2000 Ellison gave a speech at a fundraising event sponsored by the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, on whose steering committee he previously had served. Also in attendance was the former Weather Underground leader Bernardine Dohrn. The event was a fundraiser for onetime Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist Kathleen Soliah after her apprehension in St. Paul for the attempted murder of Los Angeles police officers in 1975. Calling for Soliah's release, Ellison referred to her as “basically … a black gang member” (though she is white) because she was purportedly a victim of government persecution. He also described Soliah as a woman who had been “fighting for freedom in the '60s and '70s.” (Soliah subsequently pled guilty to charges in Los Angeles and to an additional murder charge in Sacramento.) Further, Ellison spokefavorably of the high-profile murderers and leftist icons Mumia Abu Jamal, Assata Shakur, and Geronimo Pratt.
In 2002 Ellison, having dropped “Muhammad” from his name, was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives; two years later he was re-elected.
In 2006 Ellison ran (as a Democrat) for Minnesota's Fifth District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Early that year, the Minnesota State Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board reprimanded Ellison's campaign for unreported contributions, misclassified disbursements, and inaccurate cash balances. Ellison himself was fined for willful violation of Minnesota's campaign-finance-reporting law and was sued twice by the state attorney general.
In May 2006, Ellison addressed his Nation of Islam links in a letter he penned to the local chapter of the Jewish Community Relations Council. In the letter, Ellison asserted that his involvement with NOI had been limited to an 18-month period around the time of the Million Man March in 1995; that he had been unfamiliar with the organization’s anti-Semitic views at that time; that he “did not adequately scrutinize” those views; and that he himself had never expressed or defended such views. All of those assertions were demonstrably false. As journalist Joe Kaufman, founder of Americans Against Hate, writes: “Indeed, although he has since denied it, Ellison was involved with NOI for ten long years. In that time, he participated in NOI rallies, including the Million Man March hate fest; he defended NOI hate speech; and he used such NOI aliases as Keith Hakim, Keith X Ellison, and Keith Ellison-Muhammad.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) executive director, Nihad Awad (a self-identified supporter of Hamas), spoke at an August 25, 2006 fundraiser for Ellison, who accepted thousands of dollars in campaign donations raised by Awad. All told, the Ellison congressional campaign received approximately $50,000 in contributions that were given or raised by CAIR officials.
Also during the 2006 campaign, Ellison called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and the impeachment of President Bush.
In August 2006 the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) said: “If Keith Ellison is elected in November to represent Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, he will bring to the U.S. House of Representatives a fresh progressive voice in tradition of Paul Wellstone. He will also be the first African American congressman from Minnesota and the first Muslim in the U.S. Congress.”
In October 2006 Ellison keynoted a closed-door meeting of CAIR in Pembroke Pines, Florida.
Ellison won his congressional election on November 7, 2006, and has been re-elected every two years since then. At his 2006 victory party, a number of his supporters shouted “Allahu Akbar!”—the traditional battle cry of jihadists.
Later in November 2006, Ellison gave a speech titled “Imams and Politics” to the Fourth Annual Body Meeting of the North American Imams Federation (NAIF). At that conference, he also participated in a “Community Night” event along with Imams Siraj Wahhaj and Omar Shahin. Two days after the NAIF gathering, Shahin and five other conference attendees were removed from a US Airways flight when their suspicious behavior alarmed other passengers. In the wake of the airline incident, Ellison asked to meet with executives of US Airways and the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) to discuss what had happened. “While some constituents have understood the fears of the passenger who reported the clerics' prayers as suspicious activity, many more have expressed shock and surprise at what they perceive as discrimination,” Ellison wrote in a letter to US Airways CEO Doug Parker and Jeff Hamiel, executive director of the MAC.
That same month, Ellison spoke at the sixth annual convention of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Two years later, he would address a town hall forum during MPAC's “Activate '08 Election Campaign.”
On January 4, 2007, Ellison placed his right hand on a Koran (instead of a Bible) at the photo-op reenactment of his congressional swearing-in ceremony. (At the earlier, official ceremony, all the newly elected representatives were sworn in at one time, without any books.) Notably, the Koran used by Ellison had once belonged to Thomas Jefferson; the book had been taken from the Library of Congress, under security, specifically for Ellison's swearing-in ceremony. Clayton State University English professor Mary Grabar observed: “In this p.r. stunt [Ellison] tried to claim Jefferson’s blessing. The mainstream media presented it as another way to upstage what they see as ignorant rubes who would be upset by a Congressman not using the traditional Bible in the swearing-in ceremony.”
On February 20, 2007, Ellison endorsed the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama, praising the latter's “unifying spirit” as well as his “message of an open and fair economy, a balanced prosperity and clear opposition to the war in Iraq.”
In May 2007 Ellison spoke at the fourth annual convention of the Muslim American Society. On June 16, 2007, he was a featured speaker at the first annual banquet of CAIR’s Minnesota chapter. That same month, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee honored Ellison with its Trailblazer Award, for his “career of advocacy focused on promoting civil and human rights, peace, and prosperity for working families.”
On June 28, 2007, Ellison co-sponsored Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s bill to impeach Republican Vice President Dick Cheney for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The bill charged that Cheney had “purposefully manipulated [pre-Iraq War] intelligence” and had “fabricated a threat of weapons of mass destruction.” Other co-sponsors included William Lacy Clay, Jan Schakowsky, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, and Maxine Waters.
In a July 2007 speech, Ellison likened America's military response to the 9/11 attacks to the manner in which the Nazis had exploited the 1933 burning of the Reichstag in Berlin: “It’s almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that. After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.”
In 2007 Ellison was a guest speaker at that year's Take Back America conference, which was organized by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and the Campaign for America's Future (CAF). Ellison also spoke at the 2009 and 2010 America's Future Now conferences organized by those same two organizations, and at a 2011 Take Back the American Dream conference, again organized by IPS and CAF.
Ellison was angry when several officials of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) were tried in 2007, on charges that they had funneled millions of dollars to Hamas. After the trial ended with a hung jury on most counts, Ellison, speaking at a CAIR fundraising banquet in Anaheim, denounced the entire case as a "persecution" of the defendants, adding: "And the worst of it was not that these people's lives were disrupted, their reputations were tarnished. The worst of it was that [300] other organizations were tossed in to the mix of it all as they were listed as unindicted co-conspirators. No evidence to be found that they had done anything. So here is what we have today. 300 reputable civil rights organizations, including CAIR, put on a list they never should have been put on in a case where they had been thoroughly exonerated. It's time to call an end to wasting taxpayer money in this manner. There have been other prosecutions for Muslim charities and we've come up with nothing at all when it comes to convictions in these cases. It's time for us to call a stop to this selective prosecution. It's time to say that our justice system and our prosecutors and our police officers are here to investigate crime for the sake of public safety, not to pursue a political agenda."
Ellison issued no comment the following year, when the HLF defendants were retried and convicted on all counts.
In 2007, 2008, and 2009, Ellison spoke at the Islamic Society of North America’s annual national conventions. His 2008 address discussed the theme of “mobilizing the Muslim political machine.”
In 2008 Ellison spoke at CAIR-Tampa's sixth annual banquet, where he urged his listeners to support Sami al-Arian, the former University of South Florida professor who had confessed two years earlier to conspiring to supply goods and services to the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
In April 2008, Ellison introduced Resolution 1078 to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. This Resolution called for the implementation of a Global Marshall Plan that would “demonstrate the commitment of the United States to peace and prosperity,” a plan that “must operate within the ethical framework of generosity and magnanimity, not merely of instrumentality, and to be successful and must be perceived as more than a new attempt to extend influence into the world.” This plan mirrored the foreign-policy approach advocated by the Network of Spiritual Progressives.
In May 2008 in St. Louis, Ellison was a panelist at a town hall meeting held at the 37th International Convention of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, which was founded by the Communist Party USA.
Also in 2008, Ellison accepted $13,350 from the Muslim American Society (MAS) to finance his 16-day December pilgrimage to Mecca.
During “Operation Cast Lead” (OCL), a December 2008/January 2009 military operation in which Israel sought to quell the aggression of Hamas and other terrorists in Gaza, Ellison, stating that he was "torn" on the issue, voted "present" on -- rather than in favor of -- a January 9th non binding House resolution "recognizing Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza, reaffirming the United States' strong support for Israel, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process." The resolution passed by a margin of 390 to 5, while 21 other legislators joined Ellison in voting "present."
"The people who have a strong sympathy for the Israeli position dominate the conversation," Ellison told Al Jazeera during OCL. "It is really not politically safe to say there have been two sides to this." In an interview a month later with the BBC, Ellison similarly lamented that it was not feasible for any member of Congress to reach out diplomatically to Hamas -- not because Hamas was a genocidal terrorist organization sworn to the destruction of Israel and the mass murder of Jews -- but because such an outreach effort would be politically unpopular in the United States: "What I can tell you now is that the constellation of political forces in the United States at this moment would make a member of Congress who has reached out directly to Hamas spend all their time defending that decision and would not be able to deal with other critical issues that need to be focused on. So for example if I were to make a move like that I wouldn't be able to focus my attention on the humanitarian issue. I'd have to defend myself to my colleagues why I reached out to a terrorist organization. It would absorb all of my time. I would spend a lot of time fighting off personal attack and would not be able to achieve goals that I have."
"In mid-February 2009," reports the Investigative Project on Terrorism, "Ellison, accompanied by Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA), visited Gaza and Israel to observe the humanitarian situation after the Gaza War. Although the pair spent time on both sides of the border, most of their public statements emphasized the idea that Israel, and not Hamas, was victimizing Palestinians in Gaza."
In 2009, after the FBI had cut off its contacts with CAIR because of the organization's ties to Hamas, Ellison spoke at three CAIR fundraising dinners, gave videotaped statements at a number of others, and appeared with CAIR officials at meetings on healthcare reform and at Muslim religious festivals.
Also in 2009, Ellison delivered the keynote address at a Washington, DC forum titled “Engaging The Muslim World—Challenges and Opportunities,” sponsored by the U.S. Institute Of Peace. In his speech, Ellison stated that “violent extremism with a Muslim veneer is essentially a post-colonial reaction” (i.e., a reaction to past Western colonialism) and a manifestation of a “political environment rooted in grievance.”
In 2009 as well, Ellison met with Mohammed al-Hanooti -- a leading U.S.-based fundraiser for Hamas -- at a campaign event for for Virginia House of Delegates candidate Esam Omeish, who had previously exhorted Palestinians to follow "the jihad way" in their struggle against Israel.
In the fall of 2009 Ellison disparaged American Islamic Forum for Democracy founder M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim who has consistently warned about the threat that political Islam poses to the West, as a Muslim "Uncle Tom." Blacks, Ellison explained, are "familiar with people who would seek to ingratiate themselves with powerful people in the white community and would there turn them on the rest of us and give license to attack us all."
In a September 2009 article which he wrote, Ellison called for an end to all U.S. aid to Israel, asserting that such aid was unnecessary because Israel "is a modern industrial power with a personal income rivaling Great Britain's and a health care system that covers all its citizens."
In October 2009 Ellison denounced four Congressional Republicans who had called for an investigation of CAIR's possible infiltration of government committees. Said Ellison: “The idea that we should investigate Muslim interns as spies is a blow to the very principle of religious freedom that our Founding Fathers cherished so dearly.” Soon thereafter, Ellison attended a CAIR fundraising event in Washington and urged the organization's supporters to apply for jobs with the incoming Obama administration.
In October 2009 as well, Ellison praised the anti-Semitic Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf as one of several "respected religious authorities who converted to Islam."
On January 27, 2010, Ellison authored a letter that was signed by 53 fellow Members of Congress, calling on President Barack Obama to use diplomatic pressure to end Israel's blockade of Gaza—a blockade which had been imposed in order to prevent the importation of weaponry from Iran and Syria. By Ellison's telling, the blockade constituted an unjust form of "collective punishment" against the Palestinian people.
During his 2010 congressional re-election bid, Ellison accepted campaign contributions from such notables as Jamal Barzinji and Hisham Al-Talib, both of whom had previously served as vice presidents of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, and both of whom had been identified by the FBI as U.S. leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ellison also received donations from former Muslim American Society president Esam Omeish; Turkish Islamist Merve Kavakci; and former American Muslim Council officials Aly Abuzaakouk, Mohammed Cheema, and Yayha Basha. Further, CAIR executive director Nihad Awad helped organize a fundraiser on Ellison's behalf.
Speaking at a 2010 fundraiser that was hosted by former Muslim American Society leader and jihad supporter Esam Omeish, Ellison made plain his belief that Israel played far too large a role in controlling American foreign policy: “The United States foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of seven million people. A region of 350 million all turns on a country of seven million. Does that make sense? Is that logic?” Also at this event, Ellison said:
“[T]here is a growing awareness in the U.S. Congress and in the executive branch that everything anyone does, including Israel, is not fine.... But let me just tell you, this effort to stop settlements throughout East Jerusalem and throughout the rest of Palestine cannot be something that only the President carries on his shoulders. The American people have got to stand up and say something. And who's going to say something if you don't say something?... This is an important issue, and we should not let the President be out there by ourselves.”
“Why are we sending $2.8 billion a year over there [to Israel] when they won’t even honor our request to stop building in East Jerusalem? Where is the future Palestinian state going to be if it’s colonized before it even gets up off the ground?”
“[W]e're Americans, right? We can't allow another country [Israel] to treat us like we're their ATM. Right?”
“We should be building the bilateral business relationships between the United States and the Muslim world….Morocco, we gotta build it up. Saudi Arabia, we gotta build it up. The Gulf countries, we gotta build them. Pakistan, we gotta build them.... We need to have so much goods and services going back and forth between this country and the Muslim world that if we [American Muslims] say we need this right here, then everyone is saying, OK. Understand my point? You’ve got to be strategic….These business relationships can be leveraged to say that we need a new deal politically.”
“And I am telling you, that with your help, we are able to take Muslim presence on Capitol Hill from zero to a real player. And this is what we're trying to do and we got to do it in every state house in America, we got to do it in the Capitol Hill. The message I want to send to you is that what you're doing by donating to this campaign is positioning me and positioning Muslims in general to help steer the ship of state in America. You understand what I am saying? Steer it in a direction that makes sense.”
“... [T]hat country [Israel] has mobilized its Diaspora in America to do its bidding in America.”
“I just want to again thank Dr. Omeish, and let brother Esam know that he is my beloved brother. And I love you and you are the best and your family is so beautiful ...”
In 2011 Ellison spoke at a rally held during the annual conference of Netroots Nation.
“Diplomatically, we have got to understand that it's not about imposing will upon countries through economic warfare, like all these sanctions that we're so fond of. Equity has got to be how we interact with the rest of the world. And I'm telling you that many of the problems that we are facing today find their roots in colonial relationships that are fundamentally premised on inequity. And the reactions from people of what we used to refer to as the Third World. ... Much of what we are seeing is a reaction to historic colonial relationships and neocolonial relationships.”
Ellison added: “[S]omething is wrong ... when we have the attitude that my oil is under your sand, and so I'm gonna get it from you, and I'm willing to end your life to do it and ruin your society to do it.” He then proceeded to urge U.S. dialogue with Iran vis à vis the latter's nuclear-weapons program: “When we discuss Iran, we should be discussing what happened in 1953”—a reference to the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh's government, with the aid of American and British intelligence agencies.
On March 10, 2011, Ellison testified at a Committee on Homeland Security hearing in Washington, DC, titled “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response.” In his testimony, Ellison said: “Ascribing the evil acts of a few individuals to an entire community is wrong; it is ineffective; and it risks making our country less secure.... Targeting the Muslim American community for the actions of a few is unjust. Actually all of us—all communities—are responsible for combating violent extremism. Singling out one community focuses our analysis in the wrong direction.”
In May 2011, Ellison was the keynote speaker at a CAIR-Los Angeles fundraiser. According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Ellison spoke at a minimum of twelve CAIR fundraising events between 2006-16.
In September 2012 Ellison condemned a portion of the Republican Party Platform that stated: “There must be no use of foreign law by U.S. courts in interpreting our Constitution and laws. Nor should foreign sources of law be used in State courts; adjudication of criminal or civil matters.” Characterizing the foregoing text as a manifestation of anti-Sharia sentiment and a generalized spirit of intolerance, Ellison said:
“It's an expression of bigotry. There has never been any legislation offered to establish Shariah law—not at the federal level, not at the state level. There's not been a municipal ordinance opposing this, there's not been anything.... Why do they want to become the party of hate? They're hating on immigrants who are from Latin America. They're demonstrating hatred toward Muslims. They're demonstrating hostility toward women. They act like they don't like gay people.... I'm sad that they have decided to go into this dark ugly place where they see the whole world as their enemy.... [T]hey're the party that is basically a bigoted party and they have now officially declared themselves against a whole segment of the American population, because if we said we were going to put a plank opposing Jewish law, or Catholic canon, it would be an outrage. This is also an outrage."
When Ellison debated Republican challenger Chris Fields on October 18, 2012, the latter accused Ellison of having paid a law firm $240,000 to dig up embarrassing details of Fields' divorce; of having shorted his own (Ellison's) ex-wife on child-support payments; and of having enriched himself to the tune of some $2 million via funds from pharmaceuticals and other companies. In response, Ellison called Fields “stupid,” a “lowlife scumbag,” and a “gutter dweller.” Notably, however, the congressman did not deny the $2 million enrichment charge.
In a February 2013 interview with Fox News' Stuart Varney, Ellison expressed his belief that it is “fair” for the wealthy to be taxed at whatever rate is necessary to raise money for the provision of services to lower-income Americans. When asked if a 65% or 75% income tax rate would be fair, he stuck to his principle.
In April 2013, Ellison was the featured speaker at a “benefit dinner” held by EMERGE USA, an organization that seeks to increase the political influence of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian Americans.
On October 8, 2013, Ellison was one of eight members of Congress (all Democrats) who were arrested when they sat in the middle of Independence Avenue and blocked rush-hour traffic during an immigration rally on Washington’s National Mall. Though the Mall was, at that time, legally closed due to a so-called “government shutdown” that had gone into effect a week earlier, the National Parks Service allowed the demonstration to take place because of First Amendment protections. Consisting of more than 15,000 participants, the rally was intended to persuade Congress to pass legislation allowing illegal immigrants to apply for U.S. citizenship. Also arrested were U.S. Representatives Joseph Crowley, Al Green, Raul Grijalva, Luis Gutierrez, John Lewis, Charles Rangel, and Jan Schakowsky.
In a March 2014 television interview, host Bill Maher asked Ellison: "[W]hy doesn't your party come out against the Second Amendment? It's the problem." To that, Ellison replied: "I sure wish they would. I sure wish they would." Ellison then proceeded to enumerate a number of steps that could be taken to eviscerate the Second Amendment: "You've got to make sure that the CDC can issue reports on gun killings and hand gun violence. You've got to make sure that we can get rid of assault weapons [i.e., semiautomatic weapons]. You've got to close the loophole at gun shows. You've got to do a whole range of things to get us into a sane place. We've got 12,000 handgun murders a year. It's got to stop."
During Operation Protective Edge (OPE) -- a 2014 Israeli military incursion that was launched in response to a dramatic escalation in rocket fire against Israel by Hamas-affiliated terrorists in Gaza -- Ellison penned a Washington Postop-ed arguing that any cease fire should be predicated on Israel ending its blockade of Gaza, and claiming that a permanent peace would never be possible unless Israel were to permit and facilitate a large measure of economic relief in Gaza. "The status quo for ordinary Gazans is a continuation of no jobs and no freedom," he wrote. "This is not an attractive future. Gazans want and deserve the dignity of economic opportunity and freedom to move."
Also in 2014, Ellison was one of only eight House members to vote against H. J. Res. 76, a resolution to increase the amount of U.S. financial aid that was earmarked to help Israel maintain and develop its Iron Dome missile-defense system -- a system that had successfully intercepted dozens of Hamas rockets aimed at Israeli population centers. In an August 4, 2014 statement, the congressman explained his vote thusly: "I support the Iron Dome and have voted in favor of appropriations of over $1 billion to Iron Dome since its inception. I repeat my condemnation of Hamas' indiscriminate rocketing of Israeli civilians, and I am grateful Iron Dome has been there to protect them. I voted against H. J. Res. 76 because I believe in the midst of a hot war with so many casualties, the US government needs to be prioritizing a cease fire between the two sides. The Palestinians of Gaza remain vulnerable.... Congress should show compassion for both sides, and should also be working to fund humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. In the end, there is no military solution to this conflict...."
In a February 2015 address he delivered at the U.S. Vote Foundation’s Voting and Elections Summit in Washington, DC, Ellison denounced conservative efforts to pass voter-identification laws. Said the congressman: “Now I also think we need to make voting easier; it should be easier. In other countries it's easier. Why should voting be so difficult? Tuesday? Who thought that up? I mean the fact is, is that there’s wide variation in when people can vote. You can’t necessarily register to vote on Election Day. I’ve often asked myself why you should have to register to vote. Why shouldn’t it be automatic?”
When President Obama announced in September 2015 that he planned to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees to the U.S. during the next year, Ellison said: “Ten thousand is not enough. Aren’t we the people who say, ‘give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses’? We must do more for families who are not safe in their own homeland.” Just prior to Obama's announcement, Ellison had written the president a letter saying: “Now, more than ever, we need to live up to our history by increasing the number of Syrian refugees allowed to resettle in the United States.” (Obama's decision to import Syrian refugees was controversial because the Islamic Statehad vowedto secrete its own terrorist operatives into refugee masses, and high-ranking government officials like FBI Director James Comey, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, CIA Director John Brennan, and FBI Deputy Assistant DirectorMichael Steinbachhad all said that it would be impossible to reliably screen out terrorists posing as refugees.)
In September 2015 as well, Ellison voiced his unequivocal support for the passage of the Iran Nuclear Deal, which allowedthe Islamist regime in Tehran to enrich uranium, build advanced centrifuges, purchase ballistic missiles, fund terrorism, and have a near-zero breakout time to a nuclear bomb approximately a decade down the road. “This deal is a triumph of diplomacy over war and proves negotiation is an excellent method of peacemaking,” said Ellison. “It throws a wrench in the war machine and tells those who profit from conflict: we choose peace.”
Ellison was one of two keynote speakers at the Islamic Shura Council of California's 21st anniversary celebration on February 27, 2016. The other keynoter at that event was Siraj Wahhaj.
During a trip to Israel in June 2016, Ellison tweeted a photo of a sign accusing Israel of practicing “apartheid” against the Palestinians. According to Tabletmag.com, "Ellison’s comment reinforced the libel."
In 2016 as well, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders used his influence to secure, for Ellison, a major role in formulating the Democratic Party’s platform for the election campaign. As terrorism expert Steven Emerson reports: "Ellison and other delegates supporting Sanders wanted the Democratic Party platform to delete a description of Jerusalem as Israel's 'undivided capital' and wanted to gut language opposing the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement targeting the Jewish state."
After Fidel Castro died in November 2016, Ellison issued the following statement about the late Cuban dictator:
"He was a revolutionary leader who confronted a system of government that excluded everybody except the military and the money-rich. And he took them on, defeated them and then set the country up in a way where … Did he use harsh dictatorial tactics? Yes, probably he did … but, did he also stand up for peace and freedom in Africa? Absolutely. His Cuban forces took on the South Africa apartheid military forces and defeated them.
"And, actually deployed doctors anywhere from Chernobyl to all over South Africa, anywhere people were sick. He sent those doctors there. He made medical education very available, made medicine available. So if you look at his legacy you have to say that he confronted people with a lot of power on behalf of people that didn’t have any. He also did jail people who were political critics of his, he also did not allow … free speech … It’s a mixed bag."
Ellison was scheduled to be the keynote speaker for the annual Muslim American Society(MAS)/ Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) national convention in late December 2016. But in the days just prior to that event, web siteslike the Middle East Forum and the Investigative Project on Terrorism publicizeda great deal of crucial information revealing the fact that many of the speakers who were slated to share the podium with Ellison had ties to highly radicalized Islamic elements. For example, the convention's program director, Ah med Taha, (a) was an open supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood; (b) had previously postedonline videos claiming to expose the “Rothschild Zionism Secret Regime in America”; and (c) had circulatedarticles characterizing Egypt as “Israeli-occupied territory” because of its relatively friendly relations with the Jewish state.
Among the speakers scheduled to speak at the same MAS/ICNA event were the following:
Siraj Wahhaj, whom the U.S. Attorney for New York had identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing;
Mohammad Qatanini, a Muslim Brotherhood member who was facing deportation from the U.S. on charges connected to his undisclosed former membership in Hamas; who had prayed in 2007 for the defeat of “occupation and oppression” in Iraq, the Palestinian Territories, and Chechnya; who has preached that Jews and Christians “will be swiftly punished by Allah”; and who is a strong supporter of Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef Qaradawi;
Yusuf Islahi, a Central Advisory Council member of the Indian branch of Jamaat-e-Islami, who claimsthat Jews secretly conspired to carry out the 9/11 attacks as a means of defaming Islam;
Abdelfattah Mourou, who co-founded the Ennahda Movement, a Tunisia-based Islamic political party deeply influencedby the late Ayatollah Khomeini and the Muslim Brotherhood; Mourou once introduceda modern, abridged edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous anti-Semitic forgery;
Abdul Nasir Jangda, a Texas-based Islamic cleric whose seminary was raidedin 2015 by Pakistani law-enforcement due to its terrorist ties; who was described in a 2009 BBC reportas being guilty of “brainwashing” children into supporting terrorism; who has allegedly defendedthe use of female sex slaves within Islam; and who has advocated the killing of apostates and adulterers;
Jamal Badawi, an MAS foundingmember who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial; who has describedsuicide bombers and Hamas terrorists as “freedom fighters” and “martyrs”; and who supportsthe right of men to beat their wives;
Sheikh Kifah Mustapha, a pro-Hamas, pro-jihad imam based in Chicago;
Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, who served as a leading official with a Salafist organization called the Islamic Education and Research Academy; who was formerly associatedwith Hizb-ut-Tahrir; who once statedthat apostates from Islam should be beheaded; and who believesthat “we as Muslims reject the idea of freedom of speech, and even the idea of freedom”;
Omar Suleiman, an Islamic scholar who has describedhomosexuality as a “disease” and a “repugnant shameless sin” deserving of the death penalty;
Zaid Shakir, an Islamic cleric who believesthat Muslims should reject “the legal and political system of America” because it is “sinful and constitutes open rebellion against Allah”; who saysthat the goal of American Muslims should be “the establishment of Islam and shari'ah in America”; and who saysthat “Zionists” and the FBI were responsible for the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing;
Wesley Lebron, an open anti-Semite who warns Muslims “not to become like the Jews,” and who believesthat the “Jews did 9/11”;
Nouman Ali Khan, an Islamic religious educator whose extremism caused him to be bannedfrom entering the United Kingdom and Canada;
Muhammad Ratib al-Nabulsi, a Syrian cleric who has writtenthat “the wicked Jews are a collection of defects and imperfections, and a hotbed of vices and evils”; and who claims that “God has made it a duty to fight them [Jews] and wage Jihad against them in the meansof suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism;
Suleiman Hani, an Islamic cleric who promotes9/11 conspiracy theories; who says that “this smokescreen of a 'war on terror' has continuously been exposed as a war on Islam multiple times”; and who saysthat the kuffar [unbelievers] will suffer the “abode of hellfire” due to “their evil”;
Eddie Redzovic, a YouTube/satellite interview-program host who has sympathetically interviewedEnver Masud (a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and the author of the books 9/11 Unveiled and The War on Islam).
At a January 2017 rally held by the “Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools” — a coalition of left-wing organizations and teachers’ unions — Ellison depicted school-choice initiatives like vouchers and charter schools as schemes designed to resurrect Jim Crow-style discrimination; he also likened President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, to a segregationist. Said Ellison: “Let me just take you back a little bit to the 1950s and ‘60s. When the Supreme Court ordered that public education had to get rid of segregation, there were certain districts around the country … that rather than integrate schools [used voucher programs to] shut down the whole district. When certain leaders like Betsy Devos want to say, ‘Let’s take all the public school money and give it to private schools,’ don’t you think for a minute that this plan that they’re trying to pretty up and pass on doesn’t have a whole lot to do with those plans back in the ‘50s and ‘60s?” “It’s not that they don’t like public schools,” Ellison said of school choice advocates like DeVos. “They’re fine with public schools, as long people with privilege and access are getting that education. But when the great masses … can get an education … then that’s a little bit too much democracy for some people.”
On February 25, 2017, Ellison lost to Thomas Perez by a margin of 235 votes to 200, in a race for chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Ellison's defeat came in the second round of voting, after Perez had fallen one vote short of winning in the first round.
For an overview of Ellison's congressional voting record on a number of key issues, click here and here.
Introduction to www.discoverthenetworks.org and a brief overview of the powerful website and tool produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. - DiscoverTheNetworks
