Scott Johnson’s post about the similarities between the PC-protected political paths that both Keith Ellison and Barack Obama have climbed to high office, discussed below, wraps up with the following point:

Despite the natural alliance that should exist between them, Obama has scrupulously avoided Ellison. The New York Times reported in a June article by Andrea Elliott, for example, that Ellison had volunteered to speak on Obama's behalf at a mosque rally in Cedar Rapids, presumably before the Iowa caucus in January. Prior to the event, aides to Obama asked Ellison to cancel the trip. An Obama aide appeared at Ellison's Washington office to explain that Obama has "a very tightly wrapped message."

Publicly, yes. Or, rather, publicly where the MSM is concerned. But as recently as September 20 Ellison was rallying Muslim voters at an election event co-sponsored by the Islamic Center at New York University and MPAC. There, he described Obama as someone "who upholds our values, reflects our aspirations...I believe you should support Barack Obama." He went on to rail against "watchlists" and America's "relationship with the rest of the world, particularly the Muslim world." He also urged Muslims to advance themselves as specifically Muslim voting blocs in every state--"You ... need to develop some agenda, three or four items. One [item] should be an explicitly Muslim thing...."

Why? Muslim political power, of course. "I believe if we play the cards properly, in only a few short years, ensha'alla, the Muslim community will be a force to be reckoned with." He cited the effectiveness of the mainly Somali Muslim population in Minnesota who, he said, put him over the top in his own House race in 2006, and Muslim voters in Virginia, nearly all of whom voted for Sen. James Webb over then-Sen. George Allen ( a strong supporter of Israel, I would add), also in 2006.

"Why," Ellison asked, "are we trying to get power?" His answer about the importance of "sharing" Islamic "values" sounded very much like a coded pitch for Islamic law (sharia):

What if we use the values that support our faith in our beliefs and our imam, and share these ideas and values with the country? Wouldn’t our country be a better place for it? Wouldn’t we be a better nation if we shared ideas that guide our lives with our nation? Not to impose Islam on them but share the values with them. Good values and good ideas have a contagious effect. If you can have these values that I am talking about and you stand up for them, our country can be better for it. I believe that in today’s economy, this is a good opportunity to talk about the importance of Islamic values.

Onto a plug for sharia finance:

If our financial system had Islamic principles we, maybe, would not have some of these investment banks leveraged 99% to 1. We may not have this situation where people are using these exorbitant rate on the credit card, and prevent people from going into further economic ruin. People are consuming based on debt not based on savings. This is the time to start this conversation.

Guess the Obama campaign and/or Ellison forgot to include Andrea Elliott--or anyone else in the media--in on it.  

Elliott, not insignificantly, is the New York Times reporter who penned a three-part promo, I mean, series, on a pro-Hamas, pro-suicide bomber imam last year--and got a Pulitizer Prize for it. Which somehow makes her Ellison-on-the-outs story in June a least a little more Interesting in contemplating the age-old strategies behind political leaks to journalists.

Question is, did the story's source have a strategic motive  in releasing the pre-Iowa Caucus Ellison story in the summer just as Obama was beginning to campaign as the putative Democratic nominee?  Was it simply the case that the Obama campaign was sufficiently horrified by the thought of Keith Ellison (who has ties not only to the anti-white, anti-Semitic Nation of Islam but also to the Muslim Brotherhood-linked group of unindicted co-conspirators known as CAIR) speaking on Obama's behalf that they asked him to cancel his trip? Or did Obama wish to distance himself publicly from Ellison while perhaps Ellison campaigned quietly for Obama?

I don't know. But I do know that there Ellison was, rallying the Muslim vote for Obama at the September event described above. He was also a speaker at the convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in August, exhorting thousands of assembled Muslim delegates  to vote, period, when, during a Q & A session, Asad M. Ba-Yunus, the moderator onstage with Ellison and Rep. Andre Carson (America's second Muslim US Representative) endorsed Obama this way:

"Before we get to the next question I think I have a responsibility,
partially as the moderator, and partially as a member of the shura of
ISNA, to remind everybody that ISNA, as a tax exempt organization does
not support any particular political candidate for office, that being
said you all know who we really support."

This Obama endorsement was greeted by laughter and applause throughout the auditorium-- with, as Dave Gaubatz, who covered the proceedings, tells me, Ellison and Carson laughing and applauding along with the rest.

Somehow, I don't  think the IRS would find it all so hilarious. Nor would the IRS find it very funny that the Obama campaign had an official presence at this 501 (c )(3) group's convention in the form of a campaign booth, something both Patrick Poole and the Northeast Intelligence Network blogged about at the time. (Gaubatz also noticed there were only Obama t-shirts for sale at the event.) Of course, the MSM missed it all; I think they were busy gathering data on Sarah Palin's new fall boots. 

Why do such things matter? For one thing,  the US government has identified ISNA   as a Muslim Brotherhood front organization. Actually, the Muslim Brotherhood itself has identified ISNA as a Muslim Brotherhood front organization. And the Muslim Brotherhood is all about extending Islamic law globally--even in America. According to its 1991 grand strategy document, the Muslim Brotherhood "must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

If that's not the "work" of an enemy orgaization I don't know what is.

So, just the fact that we have an ISNA convention endorsement of Barack Obama (applauded by two US Representatives) and an Obama campaign presence at the ISNA convention should have created a political hot potato--no, a political firestorm--for the Obama campaign. Typically, though, the MSM let the story go cold without even touching it. Just as they also ignored the prominent role Obama and the Democrats had just given ISNA leader  Ingrid Mattson, who delivered a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention days earlier.

All of which harkens back to Scott Johnson's original observations concerning respective media blackouts, whether politically correct or politically partisan, when it comes to public debate and media coverage of first Ellison's and now Obama's overlapping ties to, collaborations with and support from groups and individuals whose pernicious ideologies previous generations of Americans would never have hesitated to call and reject as plainly and menacingly anti-American.