The left is beside itself right now due to the fact that Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) has held hearings in his House Committee on Homeland Security entitled, "The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response."  Islamic representative Keith Ellison (D, MN) has called them "frightening."  I'm not sure if Islamic representative Andre Carson (D, IN) has had time to respond given his busy schedule of lying about hearing racial epithets hurled at him during the healthcare debate.

Nonetheless, the left is in full pompous mode, declaring these hearings xenophobic, bigoted and hate-filled.  Got that?  It's not hate filled or bigoted to suggest that our biggest terror threat comes from pro-life groups or Christian extremists, but to hold hearings about the danger of Islamic terror coming to our shores (as it has infiltrated Europe through the slow process of immigration) is unacceptable.

The editors at National Review add some much needed common sense to all this:

The scandal is that they have been so long in coming.

 

The Department of Homeland Security was created in direct response to an act of Islamic terror, an act perpetrated by radical Muslims who lived and worked, planned and plotted inside the United States. Post-9/11, the threat of homegrown jihad is as great or greater. Just yesterday, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, a Colorado mother who had converted to Islam, married a suspected Algerian terrorist, and moved with him to Ireland to plot attacks in Europe, pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge. She had previously been in contact with Colleen LaRose ? aka Jihad Jane ? a Pennsylvania woman who herself pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in the name of Islam. As we write, Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army major of Palestinian descent, who was radicalized in the same Virginia mosque that nourished a number of the 9/11 hijackers and their American-born spiritual leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, sits in jail for the religiously motivated slaughter of 13 at Ft. Hood. He joins Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen, who will spend the rest of his life in prison after a botched attempt to blow up Times Square for the favor of Allah. Then there are Bryant Neal Vinas, Sharif Mobley, John Walker Lindh, and "the D.C. Five," all American-born converts to radical Islam arrested in the course of waging jihad against the United States.

 

These aren't mere anecdotes. They are constitutive of the brute fact that homegrown terror is an overwhelmingly Islamic phenomenon. And yet a search of the Homeland Security hearings in the 111th yields not one mention of Islamism or jihad. So the cries of religious persecution from groups like CAIR and their allies on the left badly miss the point: It isn't that we have cast a discriminatory eye toward Islam, but that excessive concern with the pieties of multicultural relativism has prevented us from being sufficiently critical of Islamism. A problem cannot be dealt with that is not first faced foursquarely, and, to appropriate a phrase, we have for too long been a nation of cowards when it comes to addressing jihadist radicalism between our shores. Representative King's hearings make an honest first effort to do that.

Amen.  This is an issue that separates those who are truly concerned about national and homeland security from those who see our greatest threat in the breakdown of their multicultural agenda.  What is a Homeland Security committee for if it's not to investigate and hold hearings on these matters?

Actually, the Democrats have an answer for that.  Care to see how they spent your time and money on this committee these last couple years?  Here are some of the hearings they held.all to protect you, of course:

"Katrina/Rita FEMA Trailers: Are They Safe or Environmental Time Bombs?" "Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and the Federal Workforce." "Online Privacy, Social Networking, and Crime Victimization." "The State of U.S. Coins and Currency." "Diversity and the Department of Homeland Security: Continuing Challenges and New Opportunities." "Civil Rights Services and Diversity Initiatives in the Coast Guard." "Protecting Animal and Public Health: Homeland Security and the Federal Veterinarian Workforce." "The Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing Enforcement Act of 2009." "Tribal Police Recruitment, Hiring, Training, and Retention at the Bureau of Indian Affairs." "Organized Retail Crime."

I've said it before and I'll say it again: you and your family are not safe under this administration.  The Democrats are not serious about national security, they are not serious about Homeland Security.  That doesn't mean the Republicans are always right or that they always have the best ideas.  It simply means what it says: the Democrats have nothing to offer on the subject because in general, they are disinterested in the topic.

That may be the greatest danger of all.