THERE'S A SENSIBLE ACTION THAT COULD COME OF ALL THIS....:

Congressional Hearing Puts Muslim Civil Rights Group in the Hot Seat Again (SCOTT SHANE, 3/11/11, NY Times)

Representative Chip Cravaack of Minnesota went further, telling a witness, Leroy D. Baca, the Los Angeles County sheriff, “Basically, you’re dealing with a terrorist organization.”

Sheriff Baca, the only law enforcement official invited to testify, said he worked regularly with the CAIR chapter in his area and pushed back. “I have not experienced anything that suggests that CAIR supports terrorism,” he said. He suggested that such accusations should not be cast about recklessly in the absence of solid evidence.

For the casual observer, it may have been a puzzling set of comments. But it is an old argument for CAIR, an aggressive civil rights organization that has long been pilloried by conservatives as the American Civil Liberties Union with a Muslim spin. A representative of the group was not invited to testify at the hearing on Thursday but submitted 30 pages of written testimony — including a list of dozens of CAIR statements dating back to 1997 condemning terrorist attacks around the world, among them attacks in the United States and Israel.

“We are the answer to violent extremism,” said Nihad Awad, a Palestinian-American who is the executive director of CAIR, noting the group’s longstanding campaign against religious violence, called “Not in the Name of Islam.”

....Muslims point out that they routinely denounce extremism but the Right apparently feels they don't do it loudly enough, so why not divert conservative think tank money to CAIR for such campaigns.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 11, 2011 9:34 PM