When public officials decide to hit the hot buttons and play Joseph McCarthy there can be uninteinded consequences. And if they also decide to throw racial or religious bigotry red meat out there it could be even more perilous for their targets. To wit, the New York Post (hardly considered a liberal mouthpiece) reports:
Police and federal officials have placed security around ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, after a New Jersey man threatened her, law-enforcement sources said.
An individual, described as a Muslim man, made the unspecified threat after Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) last week claimed Abedin’s family had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and asked for a probe to see if she is helping the Islamist organization.
Be sure to read THIS POST about how Ms. Bachmann is now coming under fire from Republicans in her party — a party where she is increasingly on the fringe and a party that most assuredly will never, ever, even-if-she-is-reincarnated nominate her for President.
She has also expanded her accusations :
One day after accusations that the U.S. government has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood leading to heavy criticism of Rep Michele Bachmann in both political parties, she’s not backing down.
Instead, the former presidential candidate has added a fellow congressman to her list of U.S. suspects she believes needs investigating.
Rep Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to congress and whom Bachmann shares the state of Minnesota with, has been added to her list of names.
For a while, Bachmann was gathering steam and some thought she might be the GOP nominee. You can view this now in cosmic terms: that fact she fizzled out proves definitively that there is a God in heaven.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.