Former DOJ Civil Rights Division lawyer says the Tennessee mosque incident over the weekend looks like a hate crime.
It’s not enough that we have American Muslims facing a new wave of Islamophobia on the American right, hyped up to greater extent by the coming November election. But it appears the we now have another case of a Sikh who’s fallen victim to backwoods American cultural illiteracy.
We’re looking into the case David just mentioned where a man was accused of punching a man wearing a turban in a Seattle area convenience store and yelling “You’re not even American, you’re al-Qaida. Go back to your country.”
The only problem is that Muslims don’t wear turbans that often. But Sikhs do. We’re trying to find out more about the victim’s identity. Needless to say, one should be able to choose the headgear of your choice.
Seattle man charged with hate crime after allegedly punching turban-wearing man at convenience store and yelling: “You’re not even American, you’re al-Qaida. Go back to your country.”
Orrin Hatch comes out in strong support for the Park51/”Ground Zero Mosque” project. See the video.
A series of unfortunate and unintended errors by Navy submariner Jarod Mcintosh alerted his superiors to the fact that he is gay, and now he’s being forced out of the military despite the Pentagon’s new kinder, gentler Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.
Larry Sabato had a quick tweet that raised an interesting point about the history of Congressional elections. The point is this: the House of Representatives has changed hands six times in the last three-quarters of a century — 1946, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1994 and 2006. Every time the Senate has flipped too. The reverse is not the case. The senate has flipped several times without the House. But going back to the New Deal era the Senate has followed the House every time. Read More
A series of new polls say that opposition to Health Care Reform is on the rise.
It appears that the Muslim congregation building the mosque and community center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee had received a series of threats before the arson attacks over the weekend. Our Rachel Slajda spoke to one member of the center’s planning committee, Saleh Sbenaty, a local college professor.
Sbenaty expressed shock over the atmosphere in a town he’s lived in for 30 years. For most of that time, he said, the community has been extremely supportive and welcoming. Even after Sept. 11, 2001, he said, neighbors came up to him and said, “Please do not feel scared. We know your religion has nothing to do with this.”
“It’s a wide shift, and a shock,” he told TPM. “It’s just mind-boggling.”
Focus on the Family, the high-profile Christian right advocacy group, says that anti-bullying campaigns are becoming a front for giving special right to gays.