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Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who is a Muslim, told Rep. Peter King (R-NY) on Sunday that he was making a mistake with calls to profile the Islamic community in the United States because similar actions in the past had created a "national stain" on the country.

NBC host David Gregory noted in a Sunday interview with both congressmen that King had insisted to the National Review that law enforcement should not be "bound by political correctness" after two Muslim men with a Chechen background were accused of carrying out bombings at the Boston Marathon.

"Absolutely," King agreed. "What the NYPD is doing in New York with a thousand police officers focusing on this issue, knowing where the threat is coming from. Now, most Muslims are outstanding people, but the threat is coming from the Muslim community."

"You're a Muslim," Gregory pointed out to Ellison. "This concerns you on civil libertarian grounds and other areas."

"Well, I'm an American," Ellison replied. "And I'm concerned about national safety -- public safety -- just like everyone is. But I think it's ineffective law enforcement to go after a particular community. I think that what we need to do is look at behavior and follow those needs where they would lead."

"Once you start saying, we're going to dragnet or surveil a community, what you do is you ignore dangerous threats that are not in that community, and you go after people who don't have anything to do with it," he added, noting that the recent poison ricin letters sent to President Barack Obama and other elected officials were terrorist attacks that had not come from the Muslim community.

"And remember, we went after one community in World War II. And the Japanese internment is a nation stain on our country. And we are still apologizing for it."

King interrupted: "No one is talking about internment! We are talking about following the Constitution."

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Jason Easley over at Politicususa pegged this one exactly right when it comes to what to expect next from Republicans, given what we heard from a number of them on the Sunday bobblehead shows this weekend complaining about how the FBI handled the investigation of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011.

As Easley noted, "If you thought the Republican behavior after Benghazi was bad, their desperate fishing expedition on Boston could be even worse." Sadly, we probably haven't seen the worst of Sen. Lindsey Graham getting a chronic case of the vapors during a Congressional hearing just yet.

Republicans Launch Their Campaign to Blame Obama for Boston By Attacking the FBI:

Republicans took to the Sunday morning shows to attack the FBI, and to lay the groundwork for blaming President Obama for the Boston bombings. [...]

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see where Graham and King are going with this. Soon they will call for hearings on how the FBI handled the intelligence they had before the events in Boston. Their purpose is twofold. They are looking for something to use to revive the Bush era war on terror policies, and they are searching for some way to blame President Obama for the attacks.

There is a difference between saying that the FBI needs to review how they handled any information they may have had before the attacks, and using politically loaded language like "the FBI dropped the ball." King and Graham are trying to set up a narrative that will tie any “failures” that they find to President Obama. That is where this is heading.

I'm sure it won't take too long to find out if he's right or not, and in the meantime, I wouldn't bet against the prediction.

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Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) on Sunday lashed out at New York Rep. Peter King (R) for creating "disdain and hatred" for Muslims following last week's bombing in Boston.

Fox News host Chris Wallace asked King in a Sunday interview if he agreed that "political correctness be damned, we have to do more effective surveillance inside the Muslim community."

"The threat is coming from within the Muslim community within these cases in New York," King asserted. "They are getting people in our country, who are under the radar screen, who have clean records. We saw it in the Times Square bomber, the subway bomber in New York. And now we've seen it -- it appears -- in Massachusetts."

"And 99 percent of the Muslims are outstanding Americans. The fact is, that's where the threat is coming from," he added. "If you know where the threat is coming from a certain community, that's where you have to look."

Feinstein, however, argued that King's rhetoric was not very helpful.

"I think the important thing is to get the facts, let the investigation proceed," she pointed out. "With respect to whether we are doing enough in the Muslim community, I think we should take a look at that."

"But I don't think we need to go and develop some real disdain and hatred on television about it."

Wallace interrupted: "I must say, I don't think that's what Congressman King was saying. He was saying, that's where the threat is coming from, we have to address the threat."

"Well, this came at this point from two individuals," Feinstein explained. "That's what we really do know. We do not know what their connections are. So, I think we ought to find out before we begin to charge them with all kinds of associations."

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Rep. Peter King (R-NY) says that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev should be treated as an enemy combatant and does not deserve to be informed of his Miranda rights to remain silent because the "battlefield is now in the United States."

In an interview on Sunday, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) if Tsarnaev should be treated as a criminal or an enemy combatant.

Feinstein argued that providing a Miranda warning to the suspect, who is a U.S. citizen, was "the only legal way to proceed."

"I do not believe that under the military commission law that he is eligible for that," she explained. "It would be unconstitutional to do that."

But King disagreed, saying that Tsarnaev "should be treated as a enemy combatant for the purpose of interrogation."

"The reason for it is there are so many questions unanswered, there are so many potential links to terrorism here," he continued. "Also, the battlefield is now in the United States. So, I believe he is an enemy combatant."

The New York Republican added that the suspect would be tried in a civilian court and the statements taken during interrogations could not be used against him in the trial.

"But right now he is one of the only links we have in any Chechen involvement in the al Qaeda movement, in the overall Islamist movement. And we don't know, are there other conspirators out there? Are there other explosives out there? Where did they get their radicalization? Are there mosques, imams that we should be looking at? Who did his brother meet with when he was in Russia, in Chechnya? These are only questions that I believe can be obtained if he does not get is Miranda rights."

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Apparently Bill-O doesn't believe that something can be both a tragedy and and act of terrorism, because he decided to spend his opening segment on this Monday's The Factor, attacking President Obama for calling the Boston Marathon bombings a tragedy and not using the word terrorism during his brief press conference this afternoon.

Note to Bill-O -- the President may not have used the word "terrorism" during his presser, but it was clearly implied and what he said was we should wait and find out more information before we jump to conclusions about what happened.

Which is exactly what O'Reilly and his guest Rep. Peter King did here. And pardon me if I'm not in the mood to hear from hypocrite Peter King given his record on terrorism. He doesn't seem to mind it so much if he supports the cause in question.

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After we saw New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New York Rep. Peter King tear into House Speaker John Boehner for cancelling the vote on Hurricane Sandy relief over the holidays, Jon Stewart took his turn upon returning from vacation this Monday and he got some knocks in at the rest of the House Republicans as well.

Stewart singled out Representatives Paul Ryan and Steven Palazzo for voting against the bill once Boehner finally did bring it to the floor, and as we noted here as did Think Progress, they weren't alone. 67 of them voted against the bill, 37 of whom had previously asked for disaster aid for their home states.

Here's how Stewart concluded his rant:

“This is just a simple down the middle, black and white, cut and dry, warm cup of what would Jesus or any other human being that is not an asshole do, and you blew it,” Stewart remarked.

Ryan said he opposed the disaster relief funds because the legislation contained “pork-barrel spending.”

“It’s one f**king page,” Stewart said, aghast. “It’s two paragraphs that add 9.7 billion to the national flood insurance program and nothing else. There is as much pork in here as in the mini-fridge in the break-room at PETA. There is no pork in this thing!”

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After the outrage we saw from members on both sides of the aisle the evening House Speaker John Boehner cancelled the vote on hurricane Sandy relief and the subsequent displays by Gov. Chris Christie and Rep. Peter King, among others, leave it to Bill Kristol who has never seen a dime of military spending he didn't love, to come to the defense of John Boehner.

Sadly, as Media Matters noted, he wasn't alone. And his fellow guest on Bret Baier's Special Report, Charles Krauthammer was right there with him as well. The excuse given by Kristol and Krauthammer here was primarily based on concerns that the bill was larded up with some pork that the House didn't have sufficient time to look at, even though the Senate had passed their bill a week before they were asking for this vote to be taken in the House. If that was a real concern, apparently it doesn't matter much now, since Boehner caved to the political pressure and is going to have the House vote "to shore up the National Flood Insurance Program on Friday and will vote on another $51 billion Sandy spending package on Jan. 15."

Whatever the excuses, it seems they were more than happy to give cover to Boehner and the House Republicans for being incapable of being responsible and caring about doing the job of actually governing this country, rather than continued political brinksmanship we've seen from the House and John Boehner and his cohorts taking their vacation time around the holidays, instead of tending to the needs of those suffering in the aftermath of that storm.

Here's more from the Media Matters post on Kristol:

Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol: "I Think The Speaker Was Entirely Right To Pull The Bill." During an appearance on Fox News' Special Report, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said, "I think the Speaker was entirely right to pull the bill." He added: "$60 billion is about one-tenth of this year's federal domestic discretionary nondefense spending. This is not like, gee, a couple hundred million dollars for some really important, urgent thing." [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 1/2/13]

Kristol never seems to have those same concerns about our military industrial complex. That's the only jobs program that Republicans seem to support and I've never heard Kristol express any concern over what the waste there is contributing to our budget deficit. Unlimited funds for the Pentagon. Hurricane victims, well you can wait. And don't dare include any pork in that spending because lord knows we can't have that as long as it's going for people who just had their homes destroyed in a storm and to help their state's infrastructure recover.

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Republican New York Congressman Peter King was near tears on Wednesday as he threatened to leave the Republican Party, while excoriating the leadership and other members after they reversed course and refused to pass a relief package for victims of Hurricane Sandy.

In an emotional interview with CNN, King pointed a finger directly at House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) for the failure to bring Sandy aid up for a vote after passing a bill to avert the so-called fiscal cliff.

"Boehner is the one," the New York Republican explained. "He walked off the floor. He refused to tell us why. He refused to give us any indication or warning whatsoever... I'm just saying, these people have no problem finding New York -- these Republicans -- when they're trying to raise money. They raise millions of dollars in New York City and New Jersey, they sent Gov. [Chris] Christie around the country raising millions of dollars for them. I'm saying, anyone from New York and New Jersey who contributes one penny to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee should have their head examined. I would not give one penny to these people based on what they did to us last night."

CNN host Victor Blackwell wondered if King's disgust over scuttling the hurricane relief was enough to make him leave the Republican Party.

"I'm going to do what I have to do," King insisted. "I'm going to be independent minded. Sometimes, as John Kennedy said, party loyalty demands too much. And I would -- as all of us do -- often, you give the benefit of the doubt to your party. We are a two-party system. But I'm over that because as the very least, you're expected to be treated fairly... When your people are literally freezing in the winter and they're without food and they're without shelter and they're without clothing and my own party refuses to help them, then why should I help the Republican Party?"

King recalled that Boehner refused to even speak to the Republican lawmakers from hurricane-stricken areas, at one point yelling, "I'm not going to meet with you people!"

"I was chasing the Speaker all over the House floor last night," he said. "So he wouldn't tell us why, he just decided to sneak off in the dark of night."

"I would say that the Republican Party says that it's the party of family values," King continued. "Last night, it decided to turn its back on the most essential value of all. And that's to provide food, shelter, clothing and relief for people who have been hit by a natural disaster. And I would say that the Republican Party has turned its back on those people. And it's going to be very hard for me to ask any of those people to vote for the national Republican Party."

"We were told everything was on board, everything was ready, we had all the papers ready to go, we had lined up the votes, we had the committed votes where this bill would have passed on the House floor with no problem at all, we had gone around and spoken to people, we had done everything we were asked to do. And, again, the knife in the back. And that's all it is."

UPDATE: A few hours later everything was hunky-dory between King and Boehner with the promise of $9 billion and a vote in a couple of weeks. Is there a more useless politician in America than Peter King?

(CNN) – Republican Rep. Peter King of New York said Wednesday that House Speaker John Boehner has promised a vote Friday on $9 billion in disaster aid for Superstorm Sandy and then another vote on $51 billion in aid on January 15.

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From this Tuesday's The Colbert Report, Stephen took on the so-called "fiscal cliff" and the Republicans who are at least pretending they're going to go back on the their anti-tax pledge to Grover Norquist. Colbert: Only Words As Terrifying To GOP As Grover Norquist Are ‘Buenos Días’:

“Obama’s answer to this budget crisis is to raise taxes on the wealthy just because he ran on the ‘promise’ and ‘won the election.’ It’s like he’s totally disregarding my ‘dismissive finger finger quotes,’” Colbert said.

What’s really scary, Colbert added, is that Republicans might let the President do just that, even though most congressional Republicans have signed Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge.

That name is the “two most terrifying words a Republican can hear other than ‘buenos días,’” Colbert said.

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Anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist predicts that none of the Republican who are having "impure thoughts" about taxes will actually break their pledge and vote for additional revenue.

Since singing defeats by their party in the November elections, several Republicans who signed the Americans for Tax Reform pledge -- including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) -- have said they would compromise with Democrats in return for cuts to earned benefits like Medicare and Social Security.

"No pledge-taker has voted for a tax increase," Norquist explained to CNN's Soledad O'Brien on Monday. "They've had some people discussing impure thoughts on national television."

"However, Lindsey Graham, if you listen to him, he would support higher taxes if it was used to pay down the debt -- of course, it wont be, it will be spent -- if ten-to-one ratios on entitlement reform. I've had long conversations with Lindsey Graham and he says, 'I would raise taxes if...' and then he lists this incredible lists of reforms and entitlements that the Democrats would never give him."

Norquist added: "And as I suggested to him, I said, 'Senator, you're offering to trade a tax increase for a pink unicorn that doesn't exist.'"