Topic: Gov. Chris Christie and Sohail Mohammed

[Pandora]

Oh, what a tangled web .....

A little water the bridge in New Jersey, Governor Christie finally got around to defending his nomination of Sohail Mohammed to a Superior Court Judgeship in exactly the kind of cynically liberal way you expect,

    "If it is disqualifying for the bench to be an Arab-American in New Jersey who represents innocent people and gets them released, then this isn’t the state I believe it is," Christie said


But Sohail Mohammed isn't being criticized for his actions as a lawyer... but as an activist who has come out in defense of the Fort Dix Six who plotted to kill US soldiers, for the Holy Land Foundation, Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al Arian... and many others. Who is linked to Islamic extremists via the American Muslim Union and who even tried to intimidate Coptic Christians in their time of mourning.

Christie's disingenuous remark echoes a talking point circulated by Andrew Sullivan, that Sohail Mohammed's only problem is, "Defending those innocents swept up in the police sweep after 9/11." Except that's not the case.

What Christie is trying to distract from, is his own relationship to Imam Mohammed Qatanani, a Muslim Brotherhood member associated with Hamas, whom Christie defended when the US government was trying to deport him. Sohail Mohammed was Qatanani's original lawyer, and a board member of the American Muslim Union, which is heavily intertwined with Qatanani's Islamic Center of Passaic County.

Passaic County has the second largest Muslim population in the country. And Christie clearly needed their support in the governor's race. And here's how it happened.

    Qatanani has a history of Hamas support and was related by marriage to a leading Hamas operative in the West Bank. This fall, Qatanani will return to a New Jersey immigration court, where the Department of Homeland Security is fighting to have him deported. In his initial application for a green card filed in 1999, government lawyers say Qatanani failed to disclose a conviction in an Israeli military court for being a Hamas member and providing support to the terrorist group.

    Oddly, Christie – a Republican who was then the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey – sided with Qatanani against DHS, allowing a top lieutenant, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles McKenna, to testify as a character witness at Qatanani's first immigration trial, and publicly embracing the imam at a Ramadan breakfast at his mosque. Christie later appointed McKenna as New Jersey's head of homeland security..


Not very oddly at all. And Sohail Mohammed's appointment smacks of a political payback by Christie. Unlike Qatanani, Sohail Mohammed has some veneer of legitimacy. And just enough distance from him to create plausible deniability.

Christie and the media would very much like to reduce this to Sullivan's talking point. And some conservative sites have even fallen for it. Hotair limited the reporting only to Sohail's actions as an attorney, but the issue is not that Sohail Mohammed defended terrorism suspects for pay, but that he acted as an advocate without pay. The former reflects his job, the latter his own beliefs.

There is a very reasonable letter to Governor Christie here by one of his constituents spelling out the case against Sohail Mohammed. But rather than addressing it, Christie hit out at a strawman.

When I first broke the Sohail Mohammed story back in January, Think Progress took the first and last lines of my article, and ran that as if it were the actual point of the piece. And then I watched with some amusement as liberal site after site picked up that very summary and used it without actually familiarizing themselves with the issue. The TP piece went all the way up to MSNBC and CNN, where Anderson Cooper repeated the quote verbatim. It was a lesson in how little actual investigating the media does and the extent to which they rely on Think Progress talking points.

But nobody bothers doing their research anymore. Let's take another look at Christie's defense of Sohail Mohammed.

    "If it is disqualifying for the bench to be an Arab-American in New Jersey who represents innocent people and gets them released, then this isn’t the state I believe it is," Christie said.


Aside from everything else Christie got wrong in that one sentence-- Sohail Mohammed isn't Arab, he's an Indian Muslim.

So either

1. Christie doesn't know the first thing about the background of his own nominee,

2. He doesn't know the difference between Arabs and Indian Muslims despite his time prosecuting terrorists

3. He was thinking of Imam Qatanani


Your guess is as good as mine. But clearly Christie's due diligence here is impressive. He has obviously done his research on Sohail Mohammed. No question about it.

Link

Paterson and now Passaic County, probably only two of the NJ places I'd no longer recognize as being in America. 

[charlesoakwood]

It just keeps on comin'.

[IronDioPriest]

Heh. I wonder if Ann Coulter still thinks Chris Christie is the only Republican who can win.

[Dan]

This alone will sour me on Christie. Fixing teh economic situation means nothing if you're spending time ushering the foxes into the hen house.

[charlesoakwood]

Welp Dan, it was only a matter of time before folks realized, as with Scott Brown, you can only get so much out of a Turnip.

[IronDioPriest]

There are some locations in this country that are so far lost to us that the best we can hope for is a gun-grabbing, 'Slim-loving, RINO-endorsing, pro-abort, pro-homo, bulldog of a fiscal conservative.

[Predator Don]

So in courting the muslim (county) vote, he supported legal immigration for a convicted terrorist?

In the northeast, I tolerate certain types of "republicans"....But this? Intolerable.

Be a man mr christie and tell the truth.

[rickl]

I'll allow for the possibility that Christie is simply ignorant about the Muslim Brotherhood.  If that's the case, then he needs to get up to speed right quick in order to be taken seriously for higher office.

[Glock32]

It's unfortunate, because he's been magnificent in the budgetary and fiscal debate. Mark Steyn mentioned Christie specifically yesterday when a caller asked him who he thought could be "the one" for the Republicans in 2012. He noted that the very premise of the question is the wrong way to go about it. Messianic "rock star" figures are something the Leftists go for, not us. We're looking for competent citizen-statesmen guided by fidelity to the Constitution. The Left's fetishistic attraction to personalities has a long history. Almost all Marxist regimes in history have been dominated by personality cults - Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Tito, Ceausescu, Castro, etc. The cult they built around Obama is downright embarrassing. We don't need to go down that unnatural path.

Christie might be the best we can expect for a state like New Jersey, but he's got too many demerits for the Office of President.

[rickl]

The cult of personality around Obama was the first thing I noticed during the campaign, and I had a strong sense of foreboding about it.

[what the Hell?]

 

As a "former "NJ rez, I can 100% attest to the makeup of both Paterson and Newark, one cxan easily think they're in the Middle East. BTW, Jersey cherred as well as Paterson when Twins went down,
I lost 343 brothers that day and say it to every Muslim I see. I also wear an FDNY emblem EVERY day since 9-11 NEVER EVER FORGET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

May the rot in hell with 70 gay guys

[charlesoakwood]

As a "former "NJ rez, I can 100% attest to the makeup of both Paterson and Newark, one cxan easily think they're in the Middle East. BTW, Jersey cherred as well as Paterson when Twins went down,
I lost 343 brothers that day and say it to every Muslim I see. I also wear an FDNY emblem EVERY day since 9-11 NEVER EVER FORGET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

May the rot in hell with 70 gay guys

 

[Pandora]

I'll allow for the possibility that Christie is simply ignorant about the Muslim Brotherhood.  If that's the case, then he needs to get up to speed right quick in order to be taken seriously for higher office.

If that's the case, that says to me something is off with Christie, IMO.

[IronDioPriest]

This is a perfect example of why becoming infatuated with any given politician based on cult of personality is the wrong thing to do. Chris Christie is almost NOTHING that we are looking for in a presidential candidate other than fearlessness of the Left and a willingness to break their fiscal irresponsibility. But he never can and never will be our champion of conservatism. It's not who he is, or what he believes.

Conservatives (admittedly myself included) have yearned for our own rockstar spokesmodel to the point where we're jumping at any shiny new object that comes into our field of vision. We need to knock it off.

[charlesoakwood]

This is a perfect example of why becoming infatuated with any given politician based on cult of personality is the wrong thing to do. Chris Christie is almost NOTHING that we are looking for in a presidential candidate other than fearlessness of the Left and a willingness to break their fiscal irresponsibility. But he never can and never will be our champion of conservatism. It's not who he is, or what he believes.

Conservatives (admittedly myself included) have yearned for our own rockstar spokesmodel to the point where we're jumping at any shiny new object that comes into our field of vision. We need to knock it off.

I hear you.  As with Christie, the more we see these shiny things the more we'll know.
I want all those shooting stars up on the debate stage to compete with the old re-treads, that will give them the opportunity to glow or vanish.

[Pandora]

I took a truckload of grief during the '08 campaign season for pointing out just these type of issues with the Republican candidates, particularly from you-know-who over Huckaboob; Guiliani's fans did NOT want to hear that he is a gun-grabber; McCain's supporters kept flying his military service flag as a rebuttal to McAmnesty.  Very discouraging to be attacked for exposing the facts.

Anybody wanting to support a particular candidate must go into it with open eyes and not just hostilely wave away inconvenient truths, see:  Barack Hussein Obama.

[John Florida]

I'm not happy about this!!

[charlesoakwood]

Don't forget, Romney's a Mormon, he not a Christian.

I hope all those peppels is real happy with the Christian they got.

&

No, I ain't proppin' for Rom.  That book scam he pulled validated some bad negatives.
[blockquote]No Retreads[/blockquote]

[MacWell™]

I liked Christie, before this, I liked Herman Cain, before I found out he was involved with the FED, now these 2 are OUT!

[IronDioPriest]

I liked Christie, before this, I liked Herman Cain, before I found out he was involved with the FED, now these 2 are OUT!

I agree. It's exactly why we have to stop this yearning for the next Reagan messiah and lunging toward anyone who says something we like, and start looking at people who adhere to principles.