Keith Ellison, media critic

From the moment Minnesota Fifth District (Mineapolis) Rep. Keith Ellison first arrived on the scene from Detroit and started making a name for himself as a law student at the University of Minnesota, he was a mouthpiece for the Nation of Islam and its revolting ideology. Over the imprecations of his Jewish classmates, for example, Ellison helped bring raving anti-Semitic Nation of Islam speaker Kwame Toure to the the University of Minnesota Law School itself in February 1990.

As a public figure in private practice Ellison befriended the gang leader whose minions committed the most notorious cop killing in Minnesota history. Ellison’s contributions included leading a mob chanting “we don’t get no justice, you don’t get no peace” outside the courthouse in support of one of the defendants subsequently convicted of the murder of the police officer. Ellison made himself a low-rent Louis Farrakhan (if that’s possible), even going through a phase during which he appeared in public with the trademark Farrakhan bow tie in the mid-1990’s. There was nothing original about his act.

When Ellison sought to remake himself as a potential national figure, he took to dissembling and prevaricating about his long-time Nation of Islam involvement. Fortunately for Ellison, the Minneapolis Star Tribune cooperated with his makeover by airbrushing his public record in Minnesota. That is the story I told here throughout the summer and fall of 2006 as Ellison ran for Congress, summarizing my research in the Weekly Standard article “Louis Farrakhan’s first congressman” and in the companion post “Keith Ellison for dummies.”

Ellison cast his Nation of Islam act aside after he failed to secure the Democratic nomination for a state legislative seat in 1998, though he was still plying some of the old-time religion in the course of defending cop killer wannabe Kathleen Soliah/Sara Jane Olson at a National Lawyers Guild fundraiser for Soliah in 2000. By that time Ellison was working Marxist shtick on his path to power in the local Democratic Party.

Elected to Congress in 2006, Ellison now embodies the Democratic Party’s alliance with radical Islam. How Ellison reconciles his Islamic faith with the party’s devout belief in homosexual rights, leftist feminism, abortion, and every other element of the party’s most radical agenda is a subject that the Minnesota media have somehow left unexplored. But it should come as no surprise to find Ellison peddling his shtick as a media critic this weekend at the far-left National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis (video above).

As Charles Johnson notes, Ellison talks about how Ronald Reagan made him sick, but not as sick as George W. Bush makes him (applause), he calls America an “imperial power,” and then he suggests that the country should get rid of “hate radio” and Fox News. Note the tepid audience response to Ellison’s inquiry at 8:00 regarding the employment status of the assembled multitude.

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