Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), a Muslim, has ratcheted things up with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and four other Congressmen, to include Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Trent Franks (R-AZ).

In response to letters penned by those five congressmen – which went to various Inspectors General – to include one addressed to the OIG at the State Department (cc: Hillary Clinton), Ellison demanded the evidence / sources behind the claims that Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to Clinton, has familial ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

From Ellison’s letter, via Think Progress:

In your letters, you allege that (one excerpt):

• The mother, brother and deceased father of Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, and that she, too, by extension, may be working on the organization’s behalf;

Two days after the date of Ellison’s letter, Secretary of State Clinton arrived in Cairo to meet with that country’s new Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Mursi. Granted, the Secretary of State paying a visit to the new leader of a country is not shocking but in this case, Clinton appears more interested in helping Mursi win his power struggle with the military than in acting in the best interest of the United States.

Via Reuters:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will urge Egypt’s civilian and military leaders to work together to complete a full transition to democratic rule, senior U.S. officials said on Saturday.

Clinton arrived in Cairo to meet Egypt’s newly-elected Islamist President Mohamed Mursi on Saturday and military chief Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi on Sunday, two of the central players in the power struggle playing out in the country.

“She is going to say, you have to stick with it. You have to keep going,” a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters travelling with Clinton.

“It is crucial that all of the stakeholders who need and have a voice in Egypt’s transition engage in a dialogue to answer the complicated questions around parliament and the constitution.

“So she will encourage Tantawi, as she will encourage Mursi, and civil society, to engage in that dialogue and to avoid the kinds of confrontation that could potentially lead to the transition veering off track,” the official added.

It’s important to define what “transition” means at this point because Clinton is obviously choosing that word carefully. In the case of Egypt, a “full transition to Democratic rule” obviously implies that Hillary wants the military to back down in its standoff with Mursi.

Aside from it being preposterous that “Democratic rule” can take place under the type of Sharia law that Mursi wants to impose, if Huma’s allegiance is to the Brotherhood, isn’t this precisely the position that she would want the Secretary of State to take?

As we reported here, the Muslim Sisterhood, a group to which Huma Abedin’s mother belongs (Saleha Abedin is one of its 63 leaders), is also closely connected to Egypt’s new president, Mursi. His wife, Najla Ali Mahmoud is also one of those 63 leaders and is a close colleague of Huma’s mother, Saleha.

Predictably, James Zogby of the Arab American Institute, is likening Bachmann’s claims to those of Joe McCarthy. He’s obviously neglecting the contents of a Muslim Brotherhood document penned by Mohamed Akram in 1991 that was recovered by U.S. authorities and presented as evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial.

That document referred to a “long-term plan…approved and adopted” and included this damning quote:

The Ikhwan (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 God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.

It would be nice to see Ellison address these issues but he’s not likely to without a high speed spin machine.