Mercury Rising

You'd think that by now, the nutcase right would have finally got over Keith Ellison's having been seated as a member of Congress. But you'd be thinking wrong. Check this out, from a dingbat named Ted Sampley. It's currently making the rounds of the racist wing of the wingnut circuit:

Democrat Keith Ellison is now officially the first Muslim United States congressman. True to his pledge, he placed his hand on the Quran, the Muslim book of jihad and pledged his allegiance to the United States during his ceremonial swearing-in. Capitol Hill staff said Ellison's swearing-in photo opportunity drew more media than they had ever seen in the history of the U.S. House. Ellison represents the 5th Congressional District of Minnesota. The Quran Ellison used was no ordinary book. It once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and one of America's founding fathers. Ellison borrowed it from the Rare Book Section of the Library of Congress. It was one of the 6,500 Jefferson books archived in the library. Ellison, who was born in Detroit and converted to Islam while in college, said he chose to use Jefferson's Quran because it showed that "a visionary like Jefferson" believed that wisdom could be gleaned from many sources. There is no doubt Ellison was right about Jefferson believing wisdom could be "gleaned" from the Muslim Quran. At the time Jefferson owned the book, he needed to know everything possible about Muslims because he was about to advocate war against the Islamic "Barbary" states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli. Ellison's use of Jefferson's Quran as a prop illuminates a subject once well-known in the history of the United States, but, which today, is mostly forgotten - the Muslim pirate slavers who over many centuries enslaved millions of Africans and tens of thousands of Christian Europeans and Americans in the Islamic "Barbary" states.

It goes on and on from there. (Of course, Sampley doesn't mention that "over many centuries", white Christian European slavers were just as industrious. But I digress.) If Mr. Sampley's name rings a bell, it's because he is a well-known smear artist and professional tinfoil-hat conspiracy nutjob. He's gone after such high-profile targets as John McCain and John Kerry with his smears. Here's what John McCain has to say about him:

"I strongly caution reporters who may be contacted by or are interested in Mr. Ted Sampley and the various organizations he claims to represent, and his opinions on the subject of Senator Kerry, or any subject for that matter, to investigate thoroughly Mr. Sampley's background and history of spreading outrageous slander and other disreputable behavior before inadvertently lending him or his allegations any credibility." "I am well familiar with Mr. Sampley, and I know him to be one of the most despicable people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. I consider him a fraud who preys on the hopes of family members of missing servicemen for his own profit. He is dishonorable, an enemy of the truth, and despite his claims, he does not speak for or represent the views of all but a few veterans. The many veterans I know would think it a disgrace to be considered a comrade or supporter of Ted Sampley."

For once, John McCain and I are in complete agreement. UPDATE: Another article with the same theme has been circulating in conservative circles in the past week, and was actually published as a letter to the editor in the print edition of today's Winona, Minnesota Daily News; I'll post a link to it later, should it go up on the WDN website. (Update the Second: And here it is.) Not only that, it also transmits a typically-bogus right-wing piece of non-history, apparently acquired from right-wing fantasist David Barton -- namely, the claim that John Randolph, not Keith Ellison, was the first Muslim member of Congress. (Which would be perfectly true, except for the fact that Randolph wasn't a Muslim. D'oh!)