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I don't know about anyone else, but if I'm going to watch a debate about what members of the House and Senate are considering on immigration reform, someone who is a member of an organization with ties to white supremacist groups and eugenicists is the last person I'd like to see have a seat at that table. But that's exactly who CNN thought was worth bringing on to discuss the topic during this segment on The Situation Room this Monday.

Lou Dobbs may be gone, but it seems his tradition of inviting extremists on the air to discuss immigration policy remains.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has more on Stein and his group here: Federation for American Immigration Reform:

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is a group with one mission: to severely limit immigration into the United States. Although FAIR maintains a veneer of legitimacy that has allowed its principals to testify in Congress and lobby the federal government, this veneer hides much ugliness. FAIR leaders have ties to white supremacist groups and eugenicists and have made many racist statements. Its advertisements have been rejected because of racist content. FAIR’s founder, John Tanton, has expressed his wish that America remain a majority-white population: a goal to be achieved, presumably, by limiting the number of nonwhites who enter the country. One of the group’s main goals is upending the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended a decades-long, racist quota system that limited immigration mostly to northern Europeans. FAIR President Dan Stein has called the Act a "mistake." [...]

Between 1985 and 1994, FAIR received around $1.2 million in grants from the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund is a eugenicist organization that was started in 1937 by men close to the Nazi regime who wanted to pursue "race betterment" by promoting the genetic lines of American whites. Now led by race scientist J. Philippe Rushton, the fund continues to back studies intended to reveal the inferiority of minorities to whites.

FAIR stopped receiving Pioneer Fund grants in 1994 due to bad publicity it received when the grants were made public. At the time, FAIR was backing California's punishing anti-immigrant Proposition 187, which would have denied education and health care to the children of undocumented immigrants in that state if it had not died as the result of court challenges. Stein and Tanton had led FAIR's efforts to win funding from Pioneer, and Stein said in 1993, before Pioneer's extremism was made public, that his "job [was] to get every dime of Pioneer's money."

There's lots more there in their full report, so go read the rest.

Full transcript below the fold.

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The American Taliban in the House took front row center yesterday in what was ostensibly a markup for the 2013 National Defense Authorization Bill. Things didn't quite work as planned in their marathon session.

via Fox News:

The House Armed Services Committee labored throughout the day Wednesday and into the wee hours of Thursday morning, crafting a massive Pentagon funding measure. But the heat yielded by the gay marriage issue was so incandescent that it cauterized traditional military topics and spurred the feistiest debate of the marathon session.

Most of these lengthy Armed Services meetings are sprinkled with discussions about MRAPs, JDAMs, engines for the Joint Strike Fighter and troop rotations.

But the colloquy about providing for the common defense of the United States devolved into a debate about stoning, sin, parsonical rights, "gayness" and canonical interpretations of the Old Testament.

Steven Palazzo (R-MS) wanted a provision banning same-sex marriages ceremonies on all military facilities. Todd Akin (R-MO) wanted a "conscience clause" so that military chaplains could refuse to wed gay and lesbian couples. And on and on it went. For hours.

Loretta Sanchez and other Democrats took the "conscience clause" to it's logical conclusion, wondering what happens when a service member just doesn't believe in others' "gayness". Austin Scott (R-GA) took exception to her reasoning, especially using the nasty bits from the Old Testament about stoning and putting gays to death.

Again, Chad Pergram at Fox's Politics Blog captured some of the exchange between Austin Scott (R-GA) and Loretta Sanchez (D-CA).

But Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) took particular issue with Akin's amendment. In addition to giving protection to chaplains, Akin's effort shields service members morally opposed to homosexuality.

Sanchez posed a hypothetical scenario to her colleagues about the consequences service members might face if they didn't, as she put it, "believe in ‘gayness.'"

Her use of the word "gayness" triggered chortles from the audience and raised the eyebrows of lawmakers and Congressional aides alike, stationed on the hearing room dais.

Sanchez then dipped into an interpretation of the Scriptures.

"Let's just say I read the Bible and it says gays should be killed. Stoned," Sanchez began.

Lawmakers who were slumped in their chairs suddenly sat up, ram-rod straight. Those listening to the proceedings, leafing through copies of Roll Call set the publications aside. Reporters posted in the back of the hearing room began pecking feverishly on laptop keyboards. Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL) and other GOP members shot steely glances at Sanchez and demanded doctrinal clarification from the Bible.

Moments later, Sanchez quoted Scripture.

"If you read Leviticus 20:13, it says man must be put to death if man has sexual relations with not a woman," Sanchez said.

"That's the Old Testament," protested Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA).

"It's the Bible!" shot back Sanchez.

Scott then blasted Sanchez, declaring he was "taken aback by those comments." She tried to get a word in edgewise, inquiring if the Georgia Republican would yield.

"I am not yielding any more time to you," snapped Scott. "I have heard enough."