Conyers-CAIR Team Up Against the FBI

Detroit Congressman John Conyers has joined ranks with CAIR and other Muslim leaders to use the death of Luqman Abdullah as a means of blunting FBI counterterrorism efforts.

Conyers said last week in a letter to AG Eric Holder that he wants a personal assurance that investigation into the death of Abdullah in a shootout with the FBI, is “rigorous, thorough and transparent.” That’s just the kind of thing liberals say as a hedge against investigative findings that might never support whatever sinister version of reality they’re peddling to their alienated base. In this case, CAIR started claiming that Abdullah’s death was an FBI assassination of a community leader the day after it happened. Now, if the facts show the FBI shot Abdullah fair and square after he opened fire on them, CAIR and Conyers can still stick to their guns. They’ll just tell their constituents that the investigation lacked thoroughness, or was a cover-up. That, Conyers can say, is why I demanded transparency.

While Conyers was writing to Holder, he also decided to include a call for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice “to investigate whether the FBI has violated First Amendment freedoms by using undercover agents in mosques and other houses of worship.” In other words, he was dropping a big fat hint that the Civil Rights Division, which has been badly politicized under Eric Holder, should go to work shutting down a key investigative tool of the FBI.

The FBI has been using undercover agents and informants as long as they’ve been around.

“Indeed, the FBI has long honed the skills and techniques necessary for success in protecting against international terrorism -- using informants, undercover operations and court-ordered electronic surveillance. Historically, the FBI has collected and analyzed information, whether the threat was the Soviet Union, domestic terrorist groups like the Klu Klux Klan or organized crime.”

This is not to say the government doesn’t bear watching at times. But that’s got nothing do with what Conyers is up to here. In fact, his cynical reference to the First Amendment last Wednesday was a bad joke. Last Wednesday was the same day he led the House Judiciary Committee—the one he controls--to reject a resolution that would have forced Holder’s DOJ to explain to Congress why it killed a civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation in Philadelphia.

The Department of Justice Civil Rights Division under Barack Obama and Eric Holder has been transformed into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the left wing of the Democratic Party. A philosophical objection is now in place against protecting the voting rights of any Americans who aren’t members of minority groups.

Conyers’s call for an investigation of the FBI by the Civil Rights Division is aimed solely at chilling FBI efforts to get a look at what’s going on inside the Muslim community. This fits in nicely with CAIR’s longtime campaign to keep Muslims from cooperating with the FBI at all. CAIR is behind efforts in Muslim communities to discourage people from speaking to the FBI without lawyers present. CAIR-MI produced a tape advising members who witness suspected extremist activity to report it to mosque leaders, rather than law enforcement.

The timing of Conyers’s attempted kibosh of domestic counterterrorism comes at a moment when Americans’ awareness of vulnerability to jihadist attacks is sharper than it’s been since 9/11. And, as discussed elsewhere, America is more aware than ever that the Muslim community isn’t helping in what is a very tough fight against a very complex set of enemies. (“Muslim groups still MIA on terror”).

Massachussetts just got rid of one monarchical political seat when voters united to give “Ted Kennedy’s” seat to a Republican. Conyers has been in the House of Representatives since 1965, and he has no intention of retiring from his lifetime fief. But 45 years in office actually makes Conyers far junior to John Dingell, who has been in the House for the 15th District (Dearborn) since 1955, a seat he inherited from his father, (Democrat-style, via special election), who had held it since 1933 until he died in office.

Which means, among other things, that the 15th Congressional District has been the personal property of the Dingell family longer than your mother's wedding silverware has been in your family.

I’m just saying.