Talk about a low-wire, left-wing circus act. In response to Michele Bachmann’s 16-page letter from three weeks ago, Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison apparently thought it a wise course to tout a report written by Peter Montgomery that included a meandering foreword about freedom of religion by left wing hack Bill Moyers. To call Moyers’ screed tangential to the debate would be an insult to tangential topics.

Here is an excerpt from Moyers’ foreword to 12 Rules for Mixing Religion and Politics:

Travel the country as I do as a journalist and you see an America dotted with mosques—in places like Toledo, Phoenix, and Atlanta. There are Hindu temples in Pittsburgh, Albany, and California’s Silicon Valley. You can visit Sikh communities in Stockton and Queens, New York, and Buddhist retreat centers in the mountains of Vermont and West Virginia. By one estimate, there are 335,000 religious congregations of one kind or another across the country, and that roughly 118 million people attend worship services regularly.

Furthermore, over 16 percent of Americans are “unaffiliated” and, according to a Gallup Poll, 7 percent of our population say they do not “believe in God.” Their numbers are growing as America increasingly becomes a secular society, making publicly religious conversation more “delicate and dangerous,” in the words of Thomas Land of Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. Atheists, as well as agnostics, skeptics, and humanists, have a huge stake in how religion plays out in our democracy and are making their voices heard—“smashing idols in the sanctuary,” as Land writes in Christian Century.

Religiously, then, the “melting pot” is clearly not melting, and shouldn’t; instead, it bubbles and boils with ferment, conviction, diversity, and, yes, theological competition to shape the public sphere and government. The religious scholar Elaine Pagels once told me, “There’s practically no religion I know of that sees other people in a way that affirms the other’s choice.” Or its politics.

Uh, if you find yourself asking what religious affiliation has to do with the concerns raised by Michele Bachman, you’re not alone. In addition to her concerns about Ellison’s affiliations, they also have to do with some very quantifiable affiliations of Huma Abedin, the Deputy Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton – affiliations that involve the Muslim Brotherhood.

Bachmann, et. al. want to know what they mean; they also want to know more about how Abedin was vetted, not her religion. This is important, in part, because once one understands the connections between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nazis, the reasons for those concerns become patently obvious; religious freedom has nothing to do with it, unless you’re talking about the religious freedoms of the victims of Muslim Brotherhood hatred – the Jews.

Moreover, there is irrefutable evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood in America wants to destroy our country from within. Does Huma know that? Shouldn’t we know if she does? Certainly her mother knows it. Shouldn’t we know how close Huma is to her mother? How close is she to her brother? He served as a fellow at OCIS at the same time Muslim Brotherhood Spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi served on the Board. What does Huma know about her brother’s relationship with Qaradawi? Perhaps it’s also legitimate to ask Mr. Ellison why he’s avoiding these issues completely because it’s looking increasingly like he’s running interference for something or someone.

The U.S. News & World Report explains Ellison’s use of the report, which is heavy on victimization and avoids the very real facts raised by Bachmann, Gohmert, Franks, Westmoreland, and Rooney:

Three weeks after Michele Bachmann released a 16-page-letter warning that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the U.S. government–and that it had ties to her fellow Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison–the Democratic congressman responded with a new report on the role of religion in politics.

“12 Rules for Mixing Religion and Politics,” authored by the progressive People for the American Way Foundation, or PFAW, and promoted by Ellison at an event Thursday night, decried Bachmann’s brand of political discourse.

Calling attention to the “significant movement to demonize American Muslims” in the U.S. today, the report criticized the “divisive rhetoric” it said was undermining the country’s potential.

Demonizing Muslims has nothing to do with what Bachmann, et. al. are doing.

As for Montgomery’s 12 Rules Ellison is touting… All 12 of Montgomery’s rules have to do with freedom of religion within the bounds of the U.S. Constitution.

Lost on Moyers, Montgomery, and Ellison is that the issues / concerns raised by Bachmann, et. al. with respect to Huma Abedin have nothing to do with freedom of religion and everything to do with her familial connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, an anti-Semitic entity to which Huma Abedin’s mother belongs.

Try again, Rep. Ellison. Next time, respond to facts. Don’t just build a straw man, beat on it, and think you’re getting somewhere.

You might as well go pound sand.