Michele Bachmann

After adding Rep. Allen West to its advisory board, the Thomas More Law Center has found another rabidly anti-Muslim member of Congress to join its group: Michele Bachmann. The group, best known for its unsuccessful lawsuit against Planned Parenthood and the Shepard-Byrd hate crimes law as well as its botched defense of a Pennsylvania’s school’s Intelligent Design curriculum, as of late has tried to appeal to anti-Muslim sentiments. The group believes that Islam is trying to “destroy America,” demanded a state investigation into the sale of a school to a Muslim group, and thinks that a school teaching Arabic will train kids to become terrorists. When not attacking the rights of Muslim-Americans, the group warns that Christians will soon be imprisoned due to hate crimes laws and that the “homosexual agenda” will cause America to “disintegrate.”

Seeing that Michele Bachmann has built her career on anti-gay advocacy and is currently smearing Muslim-Americans in the Obama administration by calling for McCarthy-like investigations, it is no surprised that she has decided to work with the group in their fight against “the internal threat to America posed by radical Islam.”

In accepting service on the Advisory Board, Congresswoman Bachmann stated, "I am pleased to join forces with the Thomas More Law Center. They are in the courts aggressively fighting the internal threat to America posed by radical Islam."

Congresswoman Bachmann is a member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. As a member of that Committee, she has steadfastly advocated for peace through strength to ensure America's national security.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, commented, "We are honored to have the counsel of a tough, tested, true American patriot; a person who puts her country above politics, party and political correctness. She understands and shares our concerns about the internal threat to our nation posed by Stealth Jihad as well as maintaining the Judeo-Christian values that made this nation 'the shining city on the hill.'"

Michele Bachmann is the mother of five and the foster mother of 23. As a believer in the traditional values upon which this country was founded, she consistently defends traditional marriage, the importance of the family as the first unit of government, and the right to life for all Americans, including the unborn.

Bachmann expressed her strong commitment to America's Judeo-Christian heritage and values: "I am honored to stand with the Thomas More Law Center as they engage in the legal battles to uphold the Judeo-Christian values upon which our country was founded."

If you need any more evidence that anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney is influencing Republican members of Congress to push a witch hunt against Muslim-Americans public servants, look no further than Gaffney’s interview with Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) today on Secure Freedom Radio. Franks, who is partnering with Rep. Michele Bachmann in her effort to investigate a supposed “penetration” by the Muslim Brotherhood into the U.S. government has apparently adopted Gaffney’s specialty vocabulary. Gaffney regularly warns of “civilization jihad,” “lawfare” and “pre-violent” techniques in his conspiracy-laden diatribes against Muslims in government; in the interview today, Franks echoed back all three phrases.

Franks told Gaffney that Muslim Brotherhood agents are trying to use “use our laws and our commitment to freedom and freedom of speech, which we all believe in desperately, but they hide behind it to couch what otherwise might be called sedition.” Later, the congressman claimed that if people do not listen to his warnings about the Muslim Brotherhood, “then that little unpleasantness on 9/11 has completely gone over our heads.”

Listen:

Gaffney: The central thrust of this effort really is not just that the administration doesn’t seem to understand it but that they seem to be perhaps receptive but at least being seriously subjected to an influence operation by these Muslim Brotherhood operatives. To what extent is there in your estimation enough of a basis for concern that this is done in a systematic, disciplined, rigorous way, I guess the Brotherhood calls it civilization jihad, to warrant an investigation by these inspectors general as you’ve requested?

Franks: The bottom line is the same ideology that precipitated the planning of the attacks that we suffered on 9/11 is the same ideology that gives impulse or animates this pre-violent type of jihad where we face this civilizational jihad, I think you’ve used the term, and I think it’s a very, very accurate term of where they are trying to work within our own system. I hear the term lawfare quite a lot, where they use our laws and our commitment to freedom and freedom of speech, which we all believe in desperately, but they hide behind it to couch what otherwise might be called sedition and hide behind it and call it freedom of speech.

Gaffney: Or freedom of religion.

Franks: That’s probably the worst of all.

…

Franks: The bottom line is that these letters were about the Muslim Brotherhood and if we don’t have the Muslim Brotherhood figured out as a hostile organization in the United States then that little unpleasantness on 9/11 has completely gone over our heads and I find that astonishing beyond my ability to articulate.

The conspiracy theories about Huma Abedin’s marriage to former congressman Anthony Weiner keep getting weirder. Walid Shoebat, who according to the Center for American Progress [pdf] is a “former purported Islamic terrorist turned apocalyptic Christian,” recently told David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag that Abedin’s marriage to Weiner, who is Jewish, is either part of her Muslim Brotherhood espionage or shows that Weiner converted to Islam, or both:

It is extremely rare to have Muslim women marry non-Muslims, much less to have conservative Muslims look the other way, unless Huma has a “higher calling” and a unique exception was made for her, since she is an ear into top U.S. sensitive information, or Anthony Weiner has converted to Islam or even both.

On Monday, Shoebat told the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios that the rise of Muslim Brotherhood is all part of biblical prophecy and we are witnessing the birth pangs of the End Times:

He also claimed that Obama is assisting the Muslim Brotherhood and is “in bed with terrorists,” and that Michele Bachmann and Louie Gohmert, two of the five Republican congressmen who have accused Abedin of cooperating with the Muslim Brotherhood, are acting like modern day John the Baptist fighting today’s Herod:

Rios: Did you have any idea, even ten years ago or right after 9/11 that things would come to this dangerous state where we do have, and we’re going to talk about this, this incredible infiltration at the highest levels and no one would listen? Did you ever foresee this?

Shoebat: Yes, yes, of course I expected this. Americans had a test when the elections happened and the results were Obama. We’ve seen anybody, you know, who looks at Obama’s record, he was in bed with terrorists. People need to confront this issue once and for all, President Obama doesn’t have a clean record.

…

Rios: Should we be worried about Michele Bachmann and Louie Gohmert and all these letters? Should we defend them, what’s the point?

Shoebat: Well, I mean, if you look at the story of John the Baptist, John the Baptist was doing what? He was a symbol of the church. He was fighting against Herod, Herod was a symbol of the Antichrist, a symbol of the evil one. So what happened? He exposed Herod and he got his head chopped off. So there is a danger in fighting this but the church’s position is to expose and to fight for what is right.

It was only a matter of time before Michele Bachmann’s allies tried to play the victim following the backlash against her latest conspiratorial witch hunt, this time focusing on Muslim-Americans serving in the Obama administration. Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, who helped launch the attacks on Sec. Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin and whose report Bachmann and four other Republican members cite in their letters to the inspectors general, spoke today with David Bossie of the right-wing group Citizens United to defend the witch hunt.

Bossie said that Bachmann’s main problem was naming Abedin in the State Department letter, which was rebuffed by the inspector general, when she should have tried to “name her without naming her.” He claimed that people are attacking Bachmann because she tries “to defend our freedoms” and represents a “danger” to their nefarious plans. Gaffney, who has made a career disparaging people like Abedin and even conservatives such as Grover Norquist, lamented that there is “an effort to demonize and take down” Bachmann.

Bossie: These five members of Congress led by Michele Bachmann, because they just hate her so, because they just have this natural desire to attack her at every turn because she’s decided to pick up a weapon and stand a post, she decided that she was going to defend our freedoms at every turn for many years. So certainly if I was in her camp, would I have said ‘hey let’s ask these questions, let’s do all this without putting a staffer’s name in it,’ because as a former staffer, as a guy who was the chief investigator for Congress during the ’90s and somebody who investigated the Clinton’s relentlessly and whose name was in letters like this all the time from the left, Republicans stood tall for me at every turn because members didn’t like members picking on staffers, at least how it’s presumed. So you could see how that could be perceived. I would have probably said, ‘let’s name her without naming her,’ that’s one way to solve what potentially happened.

But they want to attack Michele Bachmann for what is really an oversight in my opinion by naming her, but they want to attack her because she’s been a leader against the Muslim Brotherhood, against radical Islam, for the last four years that she has been in the House of Representatives and they see her as a danger, as a leader who is dangerous in their pursuits.

Gaffney: That’s the point. It’s really an effort to demonize and take down, if they can, a formidable political adversary in Michele Bachmann.

If Bachmann really was the courageous leader that Bossie and Gaffney described, it’s hard to see why she literally ran away from a CNN reporter who was asking her questions about the letters, and if people are only criticizing Bachmann because they detest her attempts to “defend our freedoms,” then leading Republicans like John McCain, Marco Rubio, John Boehner and Mike Rogers must be included on that list.

Bossie also took to Politico to defend the congresswoman and her Republican allies, saying they “should be applauded for their letter and be regarded as patriots”:

The inspectors general should absolutely investigate whether individuals with associations with the Muslim Brotherhood are contributing to the adoption of policies that favor an organization that poses a threat to national security. The Muslim Brotherhood is the driving force behind the effort to impose a totalitarian ideology it calls “shariah.” During the Obama presidency, the Brotherhood has made huge strides towards achieving its goal in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, as is made clear in their own documents – specifically a strategic plan introduced into evidence in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terrorism financing prosecution in our nation’s history – the Muslim Brotherhood also has as its goal “destroying Western civilization from within.” This goal is being pursued via what the Brothers call a stealthy “civilization jihad” that involves, among other techniques, gaining access to and influencing government agencies.

It is not McCarthyism to state these irrefutable facts. Neither are requests by members of Congress seeking, through the appropriate formal channels, to establish whether the Muslim Brotherhood has gained a foothold and legitimacy – especially in light of the adoption of Brotherhood-friendly policies by the Obama Administration. These are absolutely legitimate and necessary questions because of the stakes for our national security.

Far from being criticized or suppressed by America’s elites and politically correct police, Reps. Bachmann, Gohmert, Franks, Westmoreland and Rooney should be applauded for their letter and be regarded as patriots.

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s much-maligned witch hunt against Muslim-Americans working in the Obama administration, including top State Department official Huma Abedin, is the outgrowth of a festering conspiracy theory that has been gaining traction in right-wing circles, where Obama is viewed as an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood if not a secret Muslim himself.

One of the main perpetrators is Frank Gaffney, whose Center for Security Policy is cited by Bachmann in her letter to the inspector general [pdf]. Gaffney is a birther have resulted in him being driven out of even conservative gatherings. He believes that President Obama is “America’s first Muslim President” who is leading an Islamist left-wing “Red-Green axis” and intends to become a dictator. Not only does Gaffney think that Muslims should be prosecuted for practicing Sharia and that New Jersey’s Republican governor Chris Christie is guilty of “misprision of treason” for appointing a Muslim-American judge, but he also seeks the establishment of a House Anti-American Activities Committee. While speaking with Family Research Council vice president Jerry Boykin earlier this month, Gaffney asked Boykin about Huma Abedin’s “very extensive ties, family and personal, to the Muslim Brotherhood” and identified her as an “enemy inside the wire.”

Gaffney: General Boykin, we were talking before the break about an issue that I know as we’ve been discussing is of great concern to you, the Muslim Brotherhood and its rise, the extent to which it is being enabled in that rise by the Obama administration. I’d like to turn to a subject that I know you’ve also given a lot of thought to, particularly as a man who has spent many years as an intelligence professional, namely the counter-intelligence threat posed by the Brotherhood in our own country. Recently as you know Rush Limbaugh has lit up an individual with very extensive ties, family and personal, to the Muslim Brotherhood and who is at the moment the deputy chief of staff to the Secretary of State, her name is Huma Abedin. What do you make, as an intelligence professional, make of what is going on here. Huma Abedin is not alone as we’ve identified in our course, the Muslim Brotherhood in America: the Enemy Within, there are a number of others, but what is going on here and why is the Obama administration seemingly so clueless about this enemy inside the wire?

Boykin, a proponent of banning mosques and stripping Muslim-Americans of their First Amendment rights and a consistent purveyor of wild and outlandish conspiracies, said Huma Abedin’s position is proof that “there is support for the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into our government.”

Boykin: I would not begin to try and explain the actions of the administration because it is beyond anything that I can possibly claim. Secondly, Huma [Abedin] is not the only person who has penetrated our government and if you go back to the explanatory memorandum that is in our book, Sharia: The Threat, which was discovered in Annandale, Virginia in the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood, one of their strategies was to penetrate our government and they have done so. If my mother or father was a known member of the Muslim Brotherhood it is highly unlikely that I would ever be able to get a security clearance so you have to ask yourself, why is this individual able to do that when no one else can possibly do that. So there is a willful blindness to what is happening. I believe in some aspects of this situation there is support for the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into our government, that sounds extremist but it is just a fact, it’s a reality.

So while Bachmann’s reprehensible and baseless charges against Abedin and other officials may be raising eyebrows in Congress and even among her fellow Republicans, they are nothing new on the right.

Michele Bachmann took her propensity for promoting conspiracy theories to another level this week while speaking with the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios, after warning of not just a media plot to use “flattery” to sway the Supreme Court decision on health care reform but also new claims about the Obama administration and the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. She told Rios that Obama undercut the Magna Carta and “spit at the Constitution and at the will of the American people” with his move to block the deportation of some younger undocumented immigrants, proving that he is “the most dangerous President we have ever had in the history of the United States.” Bachmann, who last year said Americans were concerned about “the rise of the Soviet Union,” also criticized Obama for having “whispered to the Russian, Communist president that he would be more flexible in his second term.”

Rios: They said that even if the mandate is struck down they are going to keep other parts of it, what’s your comment about that? What do you know about that?

Bachmann: That was already violated last Friday when President Obama said that he was not going to enforce the law when it came to illegal immigration for people of a certain age. This President is not bound by the law; this is huge. Even King John under the Magna Carta had to be bound by the law, that’s what it said, that the King is under the law, that’s the essence of the Magna Carta and the very earliest form of Western, English law. But Barack Obama is not. Barack Obama sees that he is the law. That’s unbelievable. And so if the President is saying that if the Supreme Court is striking down the law and yet he is going to ignore the court and continue to put this unconstitutional law in place? That tells us who he is.

Remember, this is the same President who whispered to the Russian, Communist president that he would be more flexible in his second term. He sees himself as a law unto himself rather than a man bound by the Constitution. That’s why I say he is the most dangerous President we have ever had in the history of the United States.

…

When I look at the sacrifice that was made to this country, I’m absolutely outraged that a President would continue to spit at the Constitution and at the will of the American people and instead insist on his own way. This has been infantile the way that this President has governed. We better do something about it, rather than just shaking our heads, it’s time for us to stand up and actually do something between now and November when we have a chance.

Later in the interview, Bachmann insisted that “there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood” and that security agents are no longer allowed to learn about terrorist attacks, apparently referring to efforts to stop using discredited, anti-Muslim material.

Bachmann: It appears that there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood has been found to be an unindicted co-conspirator on terrorism cases and yet it appears that there are individuals who are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood who have positions, very sensitive positions, in our Department of Justice, our Department of Homeland Security, potentially even in the National Intelligence Agency. I am calling upon the Justice Department and these various departments to investigate through the Inspector General to see who these people are and what access they have to our information.

There is also another issue that is going on that doesn’t get talked about at all in the media and it is very sensitive. We currently have orders by President Obama for a purge in the FBI and now in the military of any training materials that teach FBI agents or people in the military about Islam and these materials are being purged. So the motivations behind terrorism and the understanding of the ideology of why people are committing terrorist acts, that is being purged out of the training materials. There was a request for this to be done by over forty Muslim groups and the President ordered this purge to occur and it’s happening now, they are purging libraries. We have other governments that have censored libraries but not the American government, now the American government is purging in the libraries in the FBI and in our military any training materials that could in any way be construed as negative about Islam.

Rios: Let me jump in and let me just say that also the trainers, many that you and I know, that are the experts on this issue are being blackballed from the Pentagon and from FBI training because they hold the wrong view.

Bachmann: That’s right. They are being blacklisted. Your listeners need to know, the experts that are training our FBI to find these terrorists, those experts are being blackballed and they are no longer allowed to teach our FBI agents. I am standing outside right now in front of our United States Capitol and a few months ago an illegal alien strapped a bomb onto himself and he was going to blow up the Capitol, and now our new agents are unable to learn that information.

Michele Bachmann yesterday sat down with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, two days before delivering the commencement address at Regent University (formerly CBN University), where she reiterated her claim that God called her to run for president. Bachmann, who ended her campaign following a sixth place finish in the Iowa Caucus with just 5% of the vote, told Brody that her purpose in the race was to drive the push to repeal the health care reform law, and also agreed with Brody’s analysis that she ran an “impeccable” and “mistake-free campaign.” “We were extremely careful,” Bachmann said, “and we were almost mistake free, but for those two points, Elvis Presley’s birthday and John Wayne’s birthplace.” Many might beg to differ, as she misplaced the first battle of the Revolutionary War, said the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation, called John Quincy Adams a Founding Father to back up her claim that the Founders actually opposed slavery and linked the Swine Flu to Democratic presidents, among countless others.

Michele Bachmann kicked off her speech to CPAC by relating the three things she learned while running for president: where John Wayne was born; the day Elvis Presley was born, and the importance of remembering the third thing in your list

It is remarkable to realize how, in just a few years and despite repeated losses, the "personhood" movement has gone from a fringe effort that had no support to a central part of the Republican presidential primary.

When the first personhood effort in Colorado got trounced at the polls in 2008, anti-choice groups ranging from National Right to Life and Americans United for Life to the Eagle Forum all refused to support these sorts of amendments.

But this year nearly the entire Religious Right movement got behind the personhood effort in Mississippi ... which likewise failed miserably.  Nonetheless, the movement vows to press forward and has even managed to get nearly all of the leading Republican presidential candidates to sign a pledge promising to support both state and federal personhood amendments.

Last night, Personhood USA and a gaggle of Religious Right anti-choice groups hosted a "Pro-life Tele-Town Hall and Radio Simulcast" that featured Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Perry being interviewed by Iowa radio show host Steve Deace and Personhood USA's Keith Mason.

Each candidate received roughly ten minutes to proclaim their anti-choice bona fides and assure those listening that, if elected, they would do everything in their power to outlaw abortion. Rick Santorum even went so far as to declare that presidential candidates should not even be saying they "believe" life begins at conception because it is not a belief, it is a scientific fact:

I want to make sure that everybody understands that when politicians say "I believe life begins at conception," that is conceding ground. And the ground that we concede is by using the term "believe." Life beginning at conception is not a belief, it is not an article of faith, it is an article of fact. It's a biological fact that life, in fact, begins as conception and we need to begin to understand that we have to use language that is consistent with what the truth is. 

While each of the candidates used the call as an opportunity to highlight their anti-abortion views and agenda, none of the candidates could hold a candle to Michele Bachmann, who made it quite clear that outlawing abortion has been her life's work ... one she is willing to die to see happen:

I want everyone to know that I recognize and respect the dignity of every human life from conception until natural death. This is not a check the box thing for me; this is the core of my conviction, this is what I would literally die for. We have a moral obligation to defend other people and the reason for that is because each human being is made in the image of likeness of a holy God.

Some of the most elegant words about life came to us from the Declaration of Independence and ti says that God has given us our right to life, and we know that President Obama has a war on the family.

What we need to do to end Roe v. Wade and end that horrible holocaust in the United States of life is to pass the Personhood Amendment. I am the first person to sign Personhood USA's pledge, and I am proud to say that, to define life from the moment of conception. We don't have to wait for the Supreme Court; we can be involved in this ourselves and I am thrilled to have signed the Personhood Amendment.

As President of the United States, I won't just talk this talk, I won't relegate pro-lifers to the corner and pat them on the head, I will actually do something about it and I will veto any congressional attempt to provide federal funding of abortion. That's why I led 40,000 Americans to the United States capitol to block Obamacare.

I'm 55, since I've been 19 I've been very active in the pro-life movement. I get it. This isn't a check the box issue for me; this is life itself. The one thing we can't get wrong in this election is the life issue. Too many times we have been relegated to the corner - I will not, as president I will actively pursue the personhood legislation.