Mother Jones and Keith Ellison Lie About Republican Platform

Daniel Greenfield 

Keith Ellison giving Mother Jones an interview is the very definition of the Red-Green Alliance. The two of them making up a lie about the Republican platform is par for the course. Spinning that lie into claims that the GOP is the Party of Hate is their idea of fun.
The lie began with a claim from Mother Jones magazine that the Republican platform was “Anti-Sharia”.

 

The right-wing conspiracy theory that American Muslims are engaged in a “stealth jihad” meant to replace the Constitution with Taliban-style Islamic law isn’t mentioned explicitly in the Republican platform. But the document does refer to it obliquely. “There must be no use of foreign law by US courts in interpreting our Constitution and laws,” the platform reads. “Nor should foreign sources of law be used in State courts; adjudication of criminal or civil matters.

 

It’s not exactly a “conspiracy theory”, unless Mother Jones considers the actions and statements of Muslim Brotherhood officials to be a conspiracy, which it is. But not a theory.


Still the Republican platform, which Mother Jones, in true leftist smear artist style, avoids fully quoting is referring to the use of foreign laws in court. Period. And when the language is quoted in full, it become obvious what the focus is.

Subjecting American citizens to foreign laws is inimical to the spirit of the Constitution. It is one reason we oppose U.S. participation in the International Criminal Court. There must be no use of foreign law by U.S. courts in interpreting our Constitution and laws. Nor should foreign sources of law be used in State courts’ adjudication of criminal or civil matters.

Sharia law would fall under this, but the focus is very clearly on the commonplace use of secular foreign laws by American judges. This practice has been defended by a number of Supreme Court judges.
The next paragraph makes the issue in question very clear.

The Lacey Act of 1900, designed to protect endangered wildlife in interstate commerce, is now applied worldwide, making it a crime to use, in our domestic industries, any product illegally obtained in the country of origin, whether or not the user had anything to do with its harvesting. This unreasonable extension of the Act not only hurts American businesses and American jobs, but also subordinates our own rule of law to the legal codes of 195 other governments. It must be changed.

The Lacey Act may be obscure to the redshirts at Mother Jones, but most conservatives know exactly what the case that inspired this is.

Last August, the federal government raided a Gibson Guitar factory and confiscated property worth at least $500,000. What had Gibson Guitars done wrong? They had imported wood from India and failed to follow every “jot and tittle” of the regulatory law … not of the United States, but of India.
Thanks to a bureaucratic U.S. law called The Lacey Act, Gibson and other importers can be criminally prosecuted by the U.S. government for violations not only of U.S. regulatory law, but also for violations of other countries’ regulatory laws. The Indian government didn’t see a reason to penalize Gibson — but Gibson’s own government did.

But just to make it so obvious that even a Mother Jones writer could understand the thrust of the platform, there was this concluding paragraph.

Just as George Washington wisely warned America to avoid foreign entanglements and enter into only temporary alliances, we oppose the adoption or ratification of international treaties that weaken or encroach upon American sovereignty.

It took a great deal of willful dishonesty from Mother Jones writer Adam Serwer to look at that and go, “Hmm clearly this is about Islam.”
Now having created a false narrative, another MJ writer then interviewed Keith Ellison about the thing that MJ had made up. And Keith Ellison sniffed a piece of cut onion and turned on the waterworks.

For Ellison, the anti-Shariah plank was part of a broader narrative of exclusion. “Why do they want to become the party of hate? …They’re demonstrating hatred toward Muslims. They’re demonstrating hostility toward women. They act like they don’t like gay people.”

Hey, you know who likes women and gay people? Muslims. They’ve even been known to love them to death.
But a dozen media outlets, including Dana Millbank  at the Washington Post, then picked up the Mother Jones story and are running with it off the cliff.
At Time Magazine, Alex Altman lists that as one of his finds under a story headlined, “We Read the Republican Platform So You Don’t Have To.” That title sums up the media and why it’s dangerous to let them read things for you.