Sunday, November 14, 2010

Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Kansas Republican Party

A pretty little piece of bigotry, from the Topeka Capitol-Journal:

Rep. Joe Seiwert, a Pretty Prairie Republican re-elected this month to another two-year term, sent an e-mail recently to about 40 people indicating Muslims couldn't be considered U.S. patriots because they owed their allegiance to Islam....

When asked about the Muslims living in Reno County, Seiwert said: "Sure, there's murderers. There's tax evasion people. There's all kinds of people" living in his district." ... 
The e-mail, apparently part of an essay written by someone else but passed along by Seiwert, said Muslims "cannot be both 'good' Muslims and good Americans. Call it what you wish, it's still the truth. You had better believe it. The more who understand this, the better it will be for our country and our future."

Unfortunately, anti-Muslim prejudice is par for the course these days, as the rather exhausted response from the representative of CAIR in Washington makes clear. But, aside from coming from an elected official who's supposed to be representing all of his constituents (even the 1% who are listed as "Asian" or "other" on his district's demographic data), is his bewildered response when called on his obvious racism:

"Everybody has an opinion, and with the right to freedom of speech or whatever, we should be able to say whatever we want to without having to be worried about what we say.

"Actually, it's an insult to me that you're trying to make something out of this deal, because I have the right to freedom of speech no different, no different than anybody else does," Seiwert said. "All I did is forward it on."
It would be quite a surprise to George Allen, say, or Carl Paladino, that a politician "should be able to say whatever we want to without having to be worried about what we say." You can say what you want, Assemblyman, but you should expect to be held accountable for it - by the press, and hopefully, eventually, from your voters.  
"Are you trying to make a political issue out of this because I'm a politician?" he asked.
Ah, finally he said something sensible.

h/t @ksdems

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