Rep. Wackadoodle strikes again!

There really is no excuse for Michele Bachmann. One wonders what ever possessed the good people of Minnesota to elect her to represent them. Of course, the good people of Minnesota might reasonably respond with a question of their own: What possessed the people of Texas to elect Louis Gohmert to represent them? They really are two of a kind and neither of them is competent to serve in elective office of any kind, in my opinion.

The two are almost always found using the same hate-filled rhetoric and chasing the same chimera that only they and their kind can see. They are at it again. This time their bug-a-boo is the Muslim Brotherhood. "The Muslim Brotherhood is taking over the country and must be stopped from forcing Sharia law on all of us!"

Bachmann, Gohmert and a couple of their fellow wackadoodles have sent letters to the inspectors general of five government agencies demanding that they investigate infiltration by the Muslim Brotherhood into the highest reaches of the federal government. In particular, they singled out for investigation Huma Abedin, the wife of former congressman Anthony Weiner and a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Bachmann questions her loyalty to the U.S., asserting that Abedin has three family members who are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. 

The family members' connection to the Muslim Brotherhood may or may not be true. I certainly would not accept Michele Bachmann's word for it. But even if it is, so what? I've had relatives who have been members of some pretty questionable organizations and who may still be for all I know. It doesn't affect my feelings about my country. But Abedin is different, you see. She is Muslim and all Muslims are suspect and dangerous in the view of people like Bachmann and Gohmert. 

By all fair-minded accounts, Abedin is a loyal and hard-working employee of the State Department and she has the confidence of Secretary of State Clinton, which is good enough for me. But the haters will never accept that and she has been targeted before by anti-Muslim activists. Bachmann asserts that since Abedin, the dangerous Muslim, holds a position that “affords her routine access to the Secretary and to policy-making” she might be able to further Muslim Brotherhood interests.

We've heard all of this before, of course. Back in the 1950s it was Joseph McCarthy who saw not Muslims but Communists under every bed in Washington, especially at the State Department. But the rhetoric then sounded much like that of the Bachmann/Gohmert crowd today. The words used are eerily the same. The spirit of McCarthy is alive and still troubling our national discourse.

Keith Ellison, a Democrat and a Muslim, who is also a representative from Minnesota, wrote a letter to Bachmann and her co-signers yesterday demanding they provide evidence to support their accusations, or drop their claims and clear Abedin and others’ names.  “I request that you provide my office a full accounting of the sources you used to make the serious allegations against the individuals and organizations in your letters,” Ellison wrote.  

Ellison is unlikely to get a coherent reply. People like Bachmann/Gohmert don't need no stinkin' "evidence." They just know in their hearts what is true because they have a pipeline to God.

Yes, at long last, they have no shame. Perhaps the voters will muster enough shame to turn them out in November. Well, Minnesota voters, anyway. I don't think there's any hope for Texas.