Dear Concerned Progressive Democrat: Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) said Thursday that President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo to the Muslim world was “un-American” because he referred to the war in Iraq as “a war of choice” and didn’t criticize Iran for developing a nuclear program. Inhofe also criticized the president for suggesting that torture was conducted at the military prison in Guantanamo, saying, “There has never been a documented case of torture at Guantanamo” (despite photos and eye-witness testimony). “I just don’t know whose side he’s on,” Inhofe said of the president. http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/05/obama-muslim-speech-inhofe/ ============== These are the kind of comments that lead people already on the brink of violence to act on their fears. To come from a United States senator is beyond unacceptable. In the months leading up to the 2008 election and in the months since, outrageous Republican rhetoric such as this has been reaching a fever pitch. Such talk harnesses hate and (as we’ve seen in recent weeks) can have deadly consequences, as it did in the murder of one of three remaining emergency medical late-term abortion doctors left in the U.S. while at church and in front of his wife singing in the choir. It’s comments like this that lead paranoid, xenophobes that already believe themselves to be part of some imagined oppressed minority, who are being told by Right-wing hate talk radio and cable TV hosts that their President is a “secret Muslim” that “pals around with terrorists”, “coddles terrorists” and (according to Rush Limbaugh on 6/04) “is doing a better job of destroying the U.S. than al Qaeda”, that can have the unintended (or intended) consequence of pushing them to violence. Such is the growing level of vitriol towards a president that has been in office for less than 150 days. Senator Inhofe already has a reputation as one of the most extremist, narrow-minded, deluded Right-wing ideologues in all of Washington. Please sign our petition to tell Congress that such rhetoric is getting out of hand and to take a very public stand against it by calling for the Censure of Senator Inhofe for his inflammatory remarks toward the President of the United States. Mugsy of MugsysRapSheet.com

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