PETER KING'S HEARINGS FELL PREDICTABLY SHORT

Investor's Business Daily is right, the Congressional hearings on Islamofascism held by Rep. Peter King fall way short of the mark, because he otherwise refused to bring in the real experts:

Reviews of Rep. Pete King’s opening round of hearings into “Muslim radicalization” are lousy. King blames the Muslim lobby and the media. But he’s the one who blew it.

King, the Republican head of the House Homeland Security Committee, deserves thrashing not because the hearing was an exercise in Muslim-bashing, as Democrats and the media unfairly charged. Far from it, the tenor of the questioning was respectful.

The problem, rather, was King didn't even come close to delivering what he advertised with his investigation, titled "The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response."

Or lack of response, as King repeatedly claimed in the buildup to the hearings. He said FBI agents and other cops working terrorism cases constantly complain about the lack of cooperation from the Muslim community. Mosque officials and other Muslim leaders actually encourage such resistance, he said.

These are explosive charges. Basically, he suggested that the Muslim leadership in this country is protecting jihadists, and possibly facilitating another terror attack on U.S. soil. Yet the seven witnesses King called to testify included no national law enforcement officials to back him up. Nor did he subpoena any of the offending Muslim leaders to address these allegations under oath.

The hearings may have helped to draw attention to CAIR, and expose Keith Ellison as a sob-storyist, but so long as he refuses to show any real guts and continues to play both sides of the same coin, he's not helping America in the fight against Islamofascism.

Atlas Shrugs has a SIOA flyer calling on King to summon real witnesses and experts, and not to act as though they're the enemy or the problem.