Congress' Muslim Bashing continues

(courtesy AP, via Yahoo! News)

Or maybe they just wanted to give a belated Christmas lump of coal...errr..."gift" to the world.

Later this week the House Committee on International Relations' Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will release a report of its inquiry into the FBI investigation of the bombing.

In this report, while acknowledging that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were involved in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Congress criticizes the FBI for not thoroughly investigating rumors that others were involved, including, you guessed it, "persons associated with Middle Eastern terrorism."

And, after looking at the member list for both the Subcommittee and the full Committee, I was surprised NOT to find this month's most famous Muslim-baiter, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA5), was nowhere to be found. Jeff Flake (R-AZ6), someone I heretofore thought was sane, was there (he's the vice-chair of the subcommittee), but not Goode.

Maybe I'm just being cynical here, but it seems to really annoy the Republicans that whenever they start spouting about Muslims being the root of all terrorism, people poke holes in their religious stereotyping with the question (and forgive the poor grammatical construction, please :) )

"So what mosque did Timothy McVeigh worship at?"

Now their bigotry is causing them to reach conclusions based on speculation rooted in rumors.

Now their bigotry is driving them to try to revise history.

It's been all of a month and a half since the elections and they seem to have forgotten that the politics of demonization and fear aren't working any more.

Here's hoping they don't learn their lesson until the 2008 election cycle is complete.

Eli Blake at Deep Thought has a, well, "thoughtful" take on the Goode/Ellison dustup.

Happy Holidays everyone!