Giving Rednecks a Bad Name

So, you may have heard that our neighbors in Minnesota elected the first Muslim congressman, Democrat Keith Ellison, a criminal defense lawyer. The right-wing echo chamber has cranked up the hysteria because Ellison plans to take the oath of office with his hand on the Koran instead of the Bible. (Actually, according to the WAPO , “when members of Congress are sworn in, they simply raise their right hand. In a ceremony afterward, they may take the oath of office on a Christian Bible, another religious book or no book at all.”

Personally, I’d prefer they all try taking the oath on the US Constitution, but Virgil Goode, Jr. congressman from Virginia’s 5th District has other ideas. You see, Virgil don’t cotton to none of these foreign religions. Ol’ Virg is a warnin’ us that that Ellison’s election poses a serious threat to the nation’s traditional values.

“I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.” Virgil promises to use the Bible when taking his own oath of office - but he failed to specify his version: King James, Wycliffe, Tyndale, Geneva, or elsewise.

Of course, for those immigration policies to have kept Ellison out of the country would have required some extraordinary planning – Ellison is an African-American who traces his roots in North America to 1742.

According to the NYT, Goode has no intention of "backing down". His spokesman said Goode "has no intention of apologizing.”

OK, so the peckerwoods of west central Virginia elect one of their own to the House, but the silence from GOP leadership and the White House is deafening. Does the GOP really stand by this kind of ignorance and religous bias?