What Nobody Told Us About Keith Ellison

Kimberly L. Tomczyk – Christian Action Network

1/8/2007

Keith M. Ellison, 5^th Congressional District
MinnesotaDemocratic Representative

Keith M. Ellison, the voice of the people, and now Minnesota Democratic Congressional representative, amazed America while smoothly handling the media with his very religious and yet diplomatic stance. All the while, much has been hidden from the public eye, much that nobody told us about Keith Ellison. An American Lawyer, Ellison first attended Wayne State University where he converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam.  Ellison then attended the University of Minnesota Law School.

It was there that Ellison began to write articles in favor of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, which was an action brought to the public eye in his recent election. Ellison’s controversial campaign and election was clearly supported by the residents of the state of Minnesota, and more importantly by his funders.  In November 2002, Ellison began building such a support group during his first public office, as a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives serving House District 58B.  It was there Ellison advocated many controversial stances while occupying his seat including: restoration of suffrage for felons while on parole, an amendment to a bill allowing impeachment as a reason for seeking post-conviction relief, discretion for courts ordering DNA sampling “especially from juveniles” , the outlawing of racial profiling while providing funding for data collection and law enforcement, and expungement of eviction records after one year. 

 Ellison was re-elected for his seat in the 2004 election and it was during this time that Ellison’s advocacy for Islamic causes began to catch the public eye.  One of Ellison’s supporters for his 2006 campaign is The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Ellison while attending the University of Minnesota, formed relationships with now CAIR head leaders Nihad Awad (an advocate of “freedom fighting and Hamas) and Ibrahim Hooper (defender of Hamas, the Sudanese National Islamic Front and other violent anti-American terrorist groups). Ellison then became involved with the Nation of Islam (NOI), keeping his involvement with them for over a ten year period, a controversial time table because Ellison in 2006, wrote a letter to the local Jewish Community Relations Council where he reportedly, “asserted that his involvement with the Nation of Islam has been limited to an 18-month period, around the time of the Million Man March in 1995”.   Interestingly enough, CAIR executive director Nihad Awad donated $2,000 to Ellison’s 2006 campaign, and at least one other CAIR employee gave him $1,000. Ellison also accepted millions of dollars from others in this organization, through personal donations.  That not being controversial enough, “Ellison’s record also includes a multitude of embarrassments of the traditional kind. He fell afoul of the IRS after failing to pay $25,000 in income taxes; he ignored fines that he had incurred for parking tickets and moving violations so numerous that his driver’s license was suspended more times than he can remember; he was fined for willful violation of Minnesota’s campaign finance reporting law. It amounts to a striking pattern of lawbreaking since he undertook the practice of law in 1990.”  Campaign finance reporting violations included unreported contributions, discrepancies in cash balances, and misclassified disbursements. The board, hearing nothing after the investigation was drawn out from 2002 – 2004, opened the investigation, and subpoenaed and fined Ellison for willful violation of Minnesota’s campaign financing reporting law This information was only very lately brought to the public attention and basically overlooked by the press as a whole, main media outlets including, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, usually the paragon of political correctness. 

Keith Ellison, a supporter and activist for the rights and beliefs of Muslims in America, led a rally in what has been known as “Hezbollah City” in Dearborn, Michigan on December 24, 2006. Ellison spoke with authority stating,” You can’t back down. You can’t chicken out. You can’t be afraid. You’ve got to have faith in Allah, and you’ve got to stand up and be a real Muslim.”  3,000 strong, the roaring crowd responded, “Allah akbar, Allah akbar,” – God is great, which were the last words heard on the cockpit voice recorder of Flight 93, just before Muslims murdered all its passengers by crashing the jetliner into the ground.  “We’re going to continue to face them,” he was quoted as saying by the Detroit Free Press on Monday. “They’re not going to stop right away. But if you, and me too, stick together, if we believe in Allah … if we turn to the Quran for guidance, we’ll find an answer to the questions we have. And we will find that we are an asset and a plus not only to our own community, but to this country, and to this whole world.”  Ellison said that Muslims can help the nation learn about justice and equal protection. “Muslims, you’re up to bat right now,” he said. “How do you know that you were not brought right here to this place to learn how to make this world better? How do you know that Allah … did not bring you here so that you could understand how to teach people what tolerance was, what justice was? How do you know that you’re not here to teach this country?” 

Dearborn, dominated by Lebanese Muslims, with an Arab population that has grown to nearly 40,000 from 7,000 in 1970, has developed into a Midwestern Middle East, only the second largest known concentration of Muslims and Arabs outside the Middle East. At the end of his speech Ellison announced, “On January 4, I will go swear an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. I’ll place my hand on the Quran.” Fulfilling this statement, on January 4, 2007 Keith Ellison was sworn into the 110th Congress, as the Minnesota Democratic Representative with his hand placed atop the Quran, once owned by Thomas Jefferson. Ellison beamed afterward sharing, “The Quran is definitely an important historical document in our national history and demonstrates that Jefferson was a broad visionary thinker who not only possessed a Quran, but read it,” he said in an interview with the Free Press. “It would have been something that contributed to his own thinking.” 

This did not occur without the controversial hubbub of many major media outlets and government representatives including Deborah Weiss of Human Events who stated,  “The purpose of the oath is to encourage people to tell the truth. By swearing under oath, one obligates himself to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We, as a nation, take the actions of our elected officials and statements made in court very seriously. Therefore, our oaths are made under penalty of perjury. The legal ramification of knowingly making false statements is the possibility of being criminally prosecuted and jailed.

Historically, the oath invoked God based on the idea that those who were religious would be less likely to lie if they feared the wrath of God, in addition to the wrath of the state. It was an additional way through which our legal system emphasized the importance of truth-telling.” Furthermore she debates, “The Koran, by contrast, teaches that it’s OK to lie to infidels if it furthers the cause of Islam, that nation states have no legitimacy, that the only legitimate nation is the nation of Islam, which has no territorial boundaries; and those who do not submit to the will of Allah should be condemned to a life of dhimmitude (second class citizenry). Because the Koran does not mandate truth telling to infidels and because upholding a man-made constitution conflicts with the literal text of Koranic law, the purpose of the oath is not served by swearing in on the Koran.”

Virgil H. Goode Jr. (R-VA), also reacted strongly Ellison’s use of the Quran by advocating strict immigration controls that he said would prevent Muslims from being elected to congress and using the Quran during swearing- in ceremonies. Goode wrote a well publicized letter stating, “When I raise my hand to take the oath on swearing-in day, I will have the Bible in my other hand. I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way…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.” 

Something of a media darling, Ellison has enjoyed mostly favorable press, with a few exceptions during his election and CAIR’s support closely behind him.  What nobody told us about Keith Ellison, as a representative of the citizens of the United States of America, and a Congressional Representative for the residents of Minnesota, is that he hid the above facts from the public eye. What nobody told us is that he has committed a multitude of legal embarrassments and has maintained a close level of association with groups that are anti-American. It is our duty and obligation to every citizen of America to expose what nobody told us about Keith Ellison.     

    www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_%28politician%29 (p 1, par 2)

    www.sos.state.mn.us/docs/58B_web.pdf (pp 1)

    www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hinfo/n1042.pdf (pp14-15)

    http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hinfo/swkly/2003-04/sw904.pdf  (p 12)

    http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hinfo/swkly/2003-04/sw1303.pdf

    http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hinfo/swkly/2003-04/sw604.pdf

    http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hinfo/swkly/2003-04/sw304.pdf  (p 22)

    http://www.americansagainsthate.org/cw/profiles_cw.php (p 18, par 1)

    http://www.americansagainsthate.org/cw/profiles_cw.php (p 18, par 2)

    http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/764obcsx.asp (p 1, par 4)

    http://www.crp.org/states/summary.asp?State=MN&Year=2006

    Johnson, Scott W. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/764obcsx.asp (p 1, par 3)

    http://www.cfboard.state.mn.us/bdinfo/investigation/Ellison_Keith_022406.pdf

    http://www.cfboard.state.mn.us/bdinfo/Con_Agr/Ellison_Keith_022406.pdf

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Ellison_%28politician%29 (p 6)

Johnson, Scott W. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/764obcsx.asp (p 1, par 2)

   www.usvetdsp.com/jan07/ellison_dearborn.htm

http://w3.nexis.com/new/results/docview/docview.dostart=3&sort=BOOLEAN&format=GNBFI&risb=21_T1028512592

  http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070105/NEWS01/70105032/1059/SPORTS11

  http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=18733