Frank Scaturro Blog

About two weeks ago you heard the President’s vision for the next year. His address identified job creation and debt reduction as critical goals we all share. In fact, he has identified those objectives for three straight years. It would be encouraging to know that our government is actually focused on those goals. Unfortunately, the reality we face is different from the words we hear.

The last several years have given us a financial crisis that has been followed by the longest period of economic hardship since the Great Depression. More and more people remain jobless because potential job creators have lost their confidence in the economy. It should be no surprise that they have lost that confidence. Under the threat of higher taxes, they do not know how much of their own money the government will let them keep. In an avalanche of regulatory mandates, they cannot predict the thousands of rules that have not yet been written by bureaucrats who have never been elected. And as government continues to print money with reckless abandon, those who wish to invest in our future do not know the value of the dollar. Our national debt now exceeds $15 trillion. It is equal to the size of our entire economy. Our government is limiting freedom and opportunity, and those who start out with the least opportunity are those who are hurt the most.

On the campaign trail in 2008, the President said that the worst thing to do during such times would be to raise taxes, but that is precisely what he and our representative in Congress, Carolyn McCarthy, have repeatedly tried to do. Not long before, they stood firmly against reforming the policies that did so much to cause the mortgage crisis that hurt us all. The 2009 stimulus bill was pushed by the administration with the promise that it would create jobs, yet unemployment then rose to over 10 percent. And it is mystifying that we are now told “no bailouts” by those who pushed through the Dodd Frank bill, which effectively institutionalized bailouts. When government uses its power wisely, it can create the conditions that encourage job creation and prosperity, but that did not occur here. Much of the over $1 trillion spent on bailouts and stimulus went to politically favored recipients while leaving the rest of us with an even larger debt than we began with. We certainly will not reduce our debt by creating more debt, and when the government prints more money, it imposes a hidden tax on all of us. If we want to get our fiscal house in order, it is well past time to get serious. No more budget gimmicks. No more excuses.

We need real, fundamental change. That means not just lowering taxes, but replacing a convoluted tax code that has been a testament to the influence of special interests. The President would make the tax code even more confusing. Here’s how government can be truly fair: cut loopholes and adopt a simpler and flatter system for all. And change means not just lowering spending, but reforming a broken spending process from top to bottom, with caps on spending and debt so that we don’t follow the example of Europe with a debt larger than our economy.

Rather than address any of these problems, this administration, aided by Rep. McCarthy, have made matters worse by pushing through a new health care entitlement when we could least afford it. And failure to address our debt crisis does not only mortgage our children’s future, it hurts our parents as their medical needs increase; and even more, it cripples the entire government’s ability to fulfill those other goals we all share regardless of our political leanings, from education to the environment to national defense.

We are already witnessing this in the proposed cuts to military spending. Wasteful spending by the military certainly should be cut, but it is wrong to go so far as to weaken our ability to keep our nation safe and protect our interests abroad. The administration’s refusal to approve the Keystone pipeline marks yet another blow to energy independence and common sense that would have created thousands of jobs on an environmentally safe project and would have allowed us to import oil from Canada instead of from less friendly countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. As a foreign policy matter, this is yet another example of how our government has alienated some of our most important allies without standing up effectively to the world’s most dangerous regimes.

This is no time to sit back and leave our country to leaders who believe they are presiding over America’s decline. We believe this country’s best days are ahead of us. But those days won’t come unless we expand freedom and opportunity rather than limit them. If others won’t do it, we will. Getting there is not about having you believe more in government. It’s a matter of government believing in you.

Frank Scaturro is a former Counsel for the Constitution on the Senate Judiciary Committee and Republican candidate for the United States House of Representatives in New York’s 4th Congressional District.

Response to President Obama's State of the Union Address by
Frank Scaturro, Republican Canidadte for Congress ( NY - 4 )
Rockville Centre, NY
January 25, 2012


Good evening.  I am Frank Scaturro, Republican candidate for Congress in New York’s Fourth District.  I’m glad to be joined by many of my Long Island friends and neighbors.  Like so many people in this room, I am deeply concerned about the direction our country is heading.

You have heard the President’s vision for the next year and an eloquent response from Gov. Mitch Daniels.  The President’s address identified job creation and debt reduction as critical goals we all share.  In fact, he has identified those objectives for three straight years.  It would be encouraging to know that our government is actually focused on those goals.  Unfortunately, the reality we face is different from the words we hear. 

The reality is that the last several years have given us a financial crisis that has been followed by the longest period of economic hardship since the Great Depression.  More and more people remain jobless because potential job creators have lost their confidence in the economy.  It should be no surprise that they have lost that confidence.  Under the threat of higher taxes, they do not know how much of their own money the government will let them keep.  In an avalanche of regulatory mandates, they cannot predict the thousands of rules that have not yet been written by bureaucrats who have never been elected.  And as government continues to print money with reckless abandon, those who wish to invest in our future do not know the value of the dollar.

The severe downturn of the last few years has collided with another crisis—one that many have seen coming for more than a generation, and one for which both political parties are to blame.  I’m talking about the crisis of spending that came as our government made promise after promise without regard for whether the promises could be kept—and without regard for the price tag it was imposing on the next generation.  Our national debt now exceeds $15 trillion dollars.  It is equal to the size of our entire economy. To give you an idea of how staggering that number is, at the rate this administration has been going, it would incur more debt over eight years than the country did during its previous 220-year history from George Washington to George W. Bush.  Higher debt actually makes it more difficult for families to make basic life decisions like buying a home, buying a car, or sending a child to college.  Our government is limiting freedom and opportunity, and those who start out with the least opportunity are those who are hurt the most.

We see this here on Long Island, which is often considered the nation’s first suburb. It was populated by the arrival of families seeking a better life—many like my own from a working class or immigrant background.  We were brought up with the values on which the American dream is built: faith, family, hard work, and a commitment to playing by the rules.  The President has said a lot about “fairness,” but a truly fair system would enforce these values, not undermine them.  We are suffering because of a system that increasingly seems rigged.  Today, many seniors who made their lives here can no longer afford to stay.  Their children are finding during mid-career that there are fewer prospects for job advancement, if they are able to keep their jobs.  And their children are leaving at a faster rate than their grandparents before they even start their careers.

Those who are missing out on the opportunity their parents enjoyed are asking the government to allow them that opportunity.  They’re asking for honesty.  Instead, time and time again, their government tells them one thing and does another.  On the campaign trail in 2008, the President said that the worst thing to do during such times would be to raise taxes, but that is precisely what he and our representative in Congress, Carolyn McCarthy, have repeatedly tried to do.  Not long before, they stood firmly against reforming the policies that did so much to cause the mortgage crisis that hurt us all.  The 2009 stimulus bill was pushed by the administration with the promise that it would create jobs, yet unemployment then rose to over 10 percent.  And it is mystifying that we are now told “no bailouts” by those who pushed through the Dodd Frank bill, which effectively institutionalized bailouts.  When government uses its power wisely, it can create the conditions that encourage job creation and prosperity, but that did not occur here.  We can paraphrase Abraham Lincoln and say that the power of government should be focused on helping those who cannot help themselves.  It should not be used to buy votes or reward political friends.  Much of the over $1 trillion spent on bailouts and stimulus went to politically favored recipients while leaving the rest of us with an even larger debt than we began with.  We certainly will not reduce our debt by creating more debt, and when the government prints more money, it imposes a hidden tax on all of us.

There is a danger in having government picking winners and losers, with the winners often telling the rest of us, You pay for our risk and we take the profits.  When you reward the irresponsible, you destroy jobs and hurt those who are most in need.  When you set low expectations of people—when government treats people as if they lack the power to run their own lives or keep their hard-earned money—don’t be surprised if they meet those expectations.

Nor should we set low expectations of our elected officials.  Too often, they act as if their top priority is jockeying for partisan advantage.  This is clear even when we hear the over-hyping of the recent debate over the payroll tax cut: Sure, the tax cut is a good idea, but whether the tax cut is extended for only two months or one year, how is that going to help a prospective employer?  It is that much harder to give someone a meaningful job if you don’t know what your tax liability will be a year from now.

Or consider the debt deal Congress reached in August.  You would not know it from the spin, but by the most generous estimate of the deal, actual spending cuts over the next year will total $7 billion.  That’s how much the federal government spends in about 36 hours.  The Democratic leadership in the Senate has gone 1,000 days without even passing a budget.  If we want to get our fiscal house in order, it is well past time to get serious.  No more budget gimmicks.  No more excuses.

We need real, fundamental change.  That means not just lowering taxes, but replacing a convoluted tax code that has been a testament to the influence of special interests.  The President would make the tax code even more confusing.  Here’s how government can be truly fair: cut loopholes and adopt a simpler and flatter system for all.  And change means not just lowering spending, but reforming a broken spending process from top to bottom, with caps on spending and debt so that we don’t follow the example of Europe with a debt larger than our economy.

Every two years, candidates for federal office promise that they will go through all our spending with a fine tooth comb and identify the waste, but they never follow through.  Well, I think it’s well past time that they do it.  The same is true of the vast unelected bureaucracies that constitute most of the federal government.  Congress has the power to oversee them and rein them in.  Instead, its usual habit is to use federal agencies to avoid difficult decisions and then blame the agencies when things go wrong.

Strong families, fiscal responsibility, a regulatory system that protects free markets rather than stifle innovation, and a sound and stable dollar have been the four cornerstones of prosperity.  The truth is that no other system in the history of the world has done more to lift people from poverty.

And as we face the most predictable crisis in our recent history, we need to get serious about taking on a broken entitlement system, which consumes most federal spending.  Social Security and Medicare alone face a shortfall of $43 trillion, and if we do not act to fix them, our debt will explode even further, and the programs won’t be there for our children and grandchildren.   Virtually every one of our elected officials knows this, yet there is widespread fear that telling the truth and proposing honest solutions will hurt them politically.  We hear talk about fairness from the same leaders who oppose even a modest level of means testing, but there is nothing fair about having the government take money from working families and redistributing it to the wealthiest seniors, who have far less need for it.  If our leaders disagree with one proposal, they should offer another one.  It is not acceptable simply to criticize those who strive for a solution when staying with the status quo is the surest recipe for failure. 

Rather than address any of these problems, this administration, aided by Rep. McCarthy, have made matters worse by pushing through a new health care entitlement when we could least afford it.  They did so with no serious consideration of the Constitution, which should be the first responsibility of every elected official.  And failure to address our debt crisis does not only mortgage our children’s future.  It hurts our parents as their medical needs increase; and even more, it cripples the entire government’s ability to fulfill those other goals we all share regardless of our political leanings, from education to the environment to national defense.

We are already witnessing this in the proposed cuts to military spending.  Wasteful spending by the military certainly should be cut, but it is wrong to go so far as to weaken our ability to keep our nation safe and protect our interests abroad.  And we must remember our veterans: Our obligation to those who serve does not end when they come home.

When it comes to some of our other goals, the government would do well to remember how much it can accomplish by getting out of the way.  The administration’s refusal to approve the Keystone pipeline marks yet another blow to energy independence and common sense that would have created thousands of jobs on an environmentally safe project and would have allowed us to import oil from Canada instead of from less friendly countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.  As a foreign policy matter, this is yet another example of how our government has alienated some of our most important allies without standing up effectively to the world’s most dangerous regimes.

We stand on the shoulders of generations who have made tremendous sacrifices—often the ultimate sacrifice—to give us this great nation.  That sacrifice also obligates those who enter public life to conduct themselves with utmost integrity.  Because of the distortions in our political process, there is a tendency for many voters to blame the failures of Washington on every member of Congress except their own.  Others give up on the system altogether.  I urge my fellow citizens not to give up, but to look at your alternatives from a clean slate.  Reform will occur only if you ask for it.  Many of us are running for office for the same reason you are dissatisfied.

This is no time to sit back and leave our country to leaders who believe they are presiding over America’s decline.  During the early months of the Revolutionary War, George Washington wrote that “Perseverance and Spirit have done Wonders in all ages.”  That remains true, and that is why our nation has overcome challenge after challenge.  We’re here because we believe this country’s best days are ahead of us.  But those days won’t come unless we expand freedom and opportunity rather than limit them.  If others won’t do it, we will.  Getting there is not about having you believe more in government.  It’s a matter of government believing in you.  Thank you for listening.  God bless you, and God bless our great country.

Last week, the Obama Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court a ruling from the Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit that held Congress could not compel Americans to purchase and maintain health insurance, the mandate that is the foundation of Obamacare.  Given the conflict among different federal courts of appeals regarding the constitutionality of Obamacare, the Supreme Court is likely to take the case and rule on it by the end of its term in June.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, as Obamacare is officially titled, relies by its terms on Congress’ constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce to justify the mandate, though few who voted for the measure seem to have seriously considered the constitutional question.  In fact, it is unclear whether a single member even read the voluminous bill in its entirety beforehand.  Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statement that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” may sum up the attitude toward deliberation on Capitol Hill.

Whether a law is unconstitutional is a different question from whether it is bad policy, and on some constitutional questions, it is difficult to predict what the Supreme Court will do.  Here there is a serious constitutional problem, and earlier in the debate over Obamacare, too many of the “experts” were wrong to dismiss such concerns as frivolous.  Pelosi herself responded to a reporter’s question on where the Constitution authorizes an individual health care mandate with “Are you serious?”

That this dismissiveness was misplaced is clear from two developments: the rulings of several federal courts striking down the individual mandate and the Justice Department’s strategy in defending the measure in court.  Earlier on, the president insisted repeatedly that the individual mandate, which had penalties attached for non-compliance, did not amount to a tax.  That is a significant distinction to make, because the power to tax conferred on Congress by the Constitution is independent of and broader than the Commerce Clause — plus the courts are generally barred by statute from interfering with the collection of federal taxes.  The act’s language cites only the Commerce Clause as a basis for the mandate with no mention of taxing authority or a revenue-raising purpose.  No doubt there was also a reluctance to be accused of trying to impose a tax increase on the middle class, given the campaign promises of 2008 (which have been broken anyway).  Yet when it came time to defend the mandate in court, the Justice Department argued that the provision did effectively constitute a tax — which amounts to a flip-flop on the part of the administration.  That sudden change of position reflects poorly on the administration, but it also reflects the search for an alternative line of defense out of fear that the courts would strike down the mandate as exceeding Commerce Clause authority.

The Supreme Court’s treatment of the Commerce Clause has changed over the last 75 years.  A series of decisions during the New Deal were so deferential to Congress that they left observers wondering whether the Court would ever observe any limits to what Congress could do under the guise of regulating interstate commerce.  In 1995, for the first time in nearly 60 years, the Court did recognize such a limit and struck down an act of Congress barring guns in school zones, and another federal statute creating civil remedies for violence against women was struck down on similar grounds in 2000.  A 2005 decision, however, upheld federal criminal penalties for the production and use of home-grown marijuana.

Viewing these cases together, it is no surprise that lower courts, which are bound to follow Supreme Court precedent, would find enough ambiguity to disagree with each other.  Yet the constitutional infirmity of the individual mandate is real and unprecedented: Congress has never before passed a law under the Commerce Clause requiring individuals, on pain of a penalty, to purchase a commercial product.  For those who do not make the purchase, there is not even an activity being regulated (unless mere thought counts).  If this does not eviscerate the limitation on Congress created by the text of the Commerce Clause, it is unclear what would.

There is a natural temptation for people in authority to expand their assertions of power beyond proper limits, which is why our framers drafted a Constitution with limited powers dispersed among separate branches.  The judiciary is independent so that it can be a check on the other branches.  Those who occupy Congress or the executive branch, for their part, have the obligation independently to follow the Constitution and not to assume that it is OK to push unconstitutional legislation with the expectation that the courts will fix it.  However spirited we get debating policy, the Constitution should be the starting point in considering legislation.  In this case, you can’t help but wonder whether those who voted for Obamacare gave it a passing thought.

Frank Scaturro is a former Counsel for the Constitution on the Senate Judiciary Committee and Republican candidate for the United States House of Representatives in New York’s 4^th Congressional District.

The protracted, often dysfunctional process of planning for Ground Zero affected plans for the site’s memorial as well as for a new World Trade Center complex.  Now, finally, the tenth anniversary of 9/11 will feature the dedication of the memorial.  The accompanying museum and the nearby buildings are still a work in progress — “progress” being a relative term, but one we at least can now use in reference to the site.

The memorial consists of large waterfalls and reflecting pools within the footprints of the twin towers surrounded by walls inscribed with the names of the victims of 9/11 and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.  This reflects the influence Maya Lin’s 1981 design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington has had on subsequent memorials.  Lin was actually on the jury that selected Michael Arad’s proposal in the 2003 memorial design competition, which drew 5,201 entries, and all of the serious contenders are reported to have reflected the minimalist orthodoxy that has emerged in the construction of memorials over the last 30 years.  Lin’s design succeeded as a poignant reminder of loss at home through sacrifice in a distant and tragically unsuccessful war, but later architectural attempts to replicate this success in different contexts have met with mixed results.

The winning design for the Ground Zero memorial was proposed under the name “Reflecting Absence,” and visitors will undoubtedly be struck by the sense of absence created in the physical void.  The new World Trade Center buildings will stand adjoining the memorial site, dominated by One World Trade Center, the spire of which will rise 1,776 feet into the air.  It will be interesting to see how much the memorial’s waterfalls, on a site surrounded by a field of trees, will effectively transport visitors entirely away from the surrounding environment, which of course resembles what once stood there far more than the memorial site.

With rare exceptions, my own preference is for monuments that can be viewed by looking up toward the sky rather than down toward the ground.  The 150-foot tall Grant’s Tomb is the largest monument on the island of Manhattan.  In my own architecturally dated mind, in the aftermath of 9/11, it seemed appropriate, if unlikely, that this distinction ultimately would belong to the memorial constructed at Ground Zero.  Still, the view that a void in itself would be a memorial overlooks the likelihood that future generations, who never will have seen the towers in the sky, will not appreciate what once stood at that site.  For one of the most historic regions in the nation — the first United States capital under the Constitution, in fact — Lower Manhattan has done an abysmal job of preserving a past that has meant so much to the legacy we have inherited.  Our success in memorializing 9/11 can well turn on whether Ground Zero site, like the nearby Statue of Liberty, calls out to the nation and its transcendent values.

Predicting the impact a memorial will have is a tricky undertaking, just as it is difficult to design a memorial that can provide context to visitors in 50 or 100 years.  Conveying absence is appropriate to a point, but I am not sure visitors will draw from this the essential context of 9/11: that what occurred was not just loss, but (to borrow Franklin Roosevelt’s words regarding Pearl Harbor) a dastardly attack; that the target was not merely a collection of offices, but America; that the objective was to destroy lives (whether U.S. citizens or not) and architecture that conveyed America’s strength; and that this tragic event included heroism and sacrifice on a scale commensurate with the most ambitious city in the world.

Let me suggest that Ground Zero has already seen the monument that conveys the transcendent spirit of our response to 9/11 in full context.  It was visible all over New York and across the country, and its familiarity did not diminish its power.  I refer to the American flag.  It made the point as widely as yellow ribbons during the Iranian hostage crisis, and as we risk being eluded by the obvious, we should regard no memorial to 9/11 as complete without it.

In the grand style that defines New York, technology would permit the installation of a flag visible at great distances.  It could reach for the skies like the Tribute in Light, the beams that have been projected from the site, or it could fly closer to the ground.  With modern light and hologram technology, we would not even require a giant cloth to create it.

It is fitting to commemorate loss and absence, but a void does not swallow up the values embodied by those lost or lessen the determination to conquer the evil that brought about the destruction.   The flag’s simplicity is sublime.  At Ground Zero, it would convey that the reason we were attacked is the reason we will prevail, and that the malevolence motivated by murderous ideology is no match for the human spirit.

Frank Scaturro is a former Counsel for the Constitution on the Senate Judiciary Committee and Republican candidate for the United States House of Representatives in New York’s 4^th Congressional District.  He is also president of the Grant Monument Association.

The disgraced Rep. Anthony Weiner finally resigned after calls to do so became almost as numerous among his fellow politicians as were the denunciations.  A conspicuous exception was his Upper Manhattan colleague, Rep. Charlie Rangel, who maintained that Weiner could still be effective in Congress “if the press gets off his back.”  Of course, Rangel knows something about lowering the ethics bar.  Last year, he was charged by the House Ethics Committee with 13 counts of misconduct that included misuse of his office, soliciting donations from those with business before the committee he chaired, and several tax violations.  Three months later, he won re-election with over 80 percent of the vote and then, a month later, became the first member of the House censured in 27 years.

Back in 1983, incidentally, two members were separately censured for having sexual relationships with a 17-year-old congressional page—a female page in the case of Rep. Dan Crane (R-IL) and a male page in the case of Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA).  Crane was defeated in his next re-election bid, and Studds was re-elected six more times before retiring in 1997 — a retirement Congress marked by naming a marine sanctuary after him.  Studds died two weeks after Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) resigned in the wake of a similar scandal in 2006 — in that case, the sending of emails and instant messages to teenage former pages.

The disparity in how different cases of wrongdoing are resolved can be maddening —even before you think of the long political careers of Sen. Ted Kennedy or Rep. Barney Frank.  And of course, the cited cases are far from comprehensive.  There are at least seven Capitol Hill sex scandals after Foley’s that led to resignations or decisions not to seek re-election — plus two members who sought re-election, one successfully (Sen. David Vitter) and one unsuccessfully (Rep. Tim Mahoney, who succeeded Foley).  Some of them involved illegal behavior, and some involved lying to the public, but all involved one common component: dishonorable conduct.

“The Honorable” is automatically attached to a person’s name upon election to just about any public office, but we generally don’t assume that election is the mark of character or wisdom any more.  For that matter, we rarely hear the word “honor” used in modern dialogue.  Whether or not it turns out to have included illegal conduct, Congressman Weiner’s scandal involves dishonorable — not to mention reckless — conduct and lying to the public.  The apparent difficulty in getting him to resign his office may have come down to a question of the trait in which he proved to be so deficient: character.  Because it can be a Catch-22 to expect a certain level of shame from someone who has acted shamelessly, we rely on others to ensure that those who hold public office do in fact demonstrate requisite character — or face the consequences.

“Because power corrupts,” John Adams asserted, “society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.”  There is no more essential ingredient in a public official than character.  If a politician’s words and actions cannot be trusted, he or she cannot be effective in office.  Is this straightforward?  In practice, I’m not sure how much it is.  When I worked on Capitol Hill, there were plenty of times I would find myself wondering whether what I heard people saying was simply an uninformed misstatement or a lie.  When I ran for Congress myself, it was clear that I was operating in a culture that did not put the highest premium on honesty.  A number of people expressed that it’s o.k., perhaps even expected, to lie on the “right” occasion.  “You’re too honest” is a remark I heard too often to count.

But those basic principles of character we are taught as children matter, and they have to be maintained amid the temptations that face those who rise in political office.  Those who have been given high office too often mistake it for an entitlement, and those who most loudly call for others to show them respect do not tend to be those who have earned it.  However often they have missed the mark in the past, in this case, most of our political leaders recognize the consequences of reckless and dishonorable behavior.  It may have taken some level of pressure from party leadership, but Rep. Weiner now recognizes it as well.

Frank Scaturro is a former Counsel for the Constitution on the Senate Judiciary Committee and Republican candidate for the United States House of Representatives in New York’s 4^th Congressional District.

South Shore Standard
March 24, 2011


The weeks leading up to the recent House Homeland Security Committee hearing to probe Muslim radicalization in the U.S. brought debate and protest that were about as intense here in Nassau County, committee chairman Peter King’s home turf, as anywhere.  Opponents denounced a supposed “witch hunt” targeting an entire community while supporters trumpeted the need for vigilance in a region that acutely felt the attacks of 9/11.  Then the hearing occurred, and almost as soon as it had ended, it was eclipsed in our collective attention—understandably—by news of the devastating Japanese earthquake and tsunami that struck a day later.  Still, a political event that had had such a dramatic buildup deserves a post-hearing assessment.

Those expecting a high level of finger-wagging and inflammatory rhetoric at the hearing were in for a partial surprise—it was largely confined to one side.  Several Democratic members of Congress waged emotional or heated denunciations of the very act of holding the hearing, starting with a panel of congressmen who gave statements to the committee.  Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim member of Congress, put the hearing in line with past examples of “[s]toking fears about an entire group for a political agenda” such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and anti-Catholic opposition to John F. Kennedy’s candidacy for the presidency.  [His anger turned to sadness as he told the story of Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a Muslim-American paramedic who was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11 while coming to the aid of victims.  Crying openly, Rep. Ellison recounted, “Some people spread false rumors and speculated that he was in league with the attackers because he was a Muslim.  But it was only when his remains were identified that these lies were exposed.”

The poignancy of that emotional moment aside, the account was misleading, omitting as it did the overwhelming and official recognition of Hamdani as a hero at the time.  This was confirmed by a thorough internet search of contemporaneous articles conducted by Matthew Shaffer of the National Review, suggesting that if any false rumors (painful as they would have been to his family) existed, they were at the margins and never made it far.  In fact, Hamdani was singled out by name in the very language of the PATRIOT Act noting that “[m]any Arab Americans and Muslim Americans have acted heroically during the attacks on the United States.”  That statute was passed before his remains were found.  Afterwards, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly attended his funeral, where they went barefoot in observance of Muslim practice.]

Those who anticipated a Republican strategy of demonization at the hearing were disappointed.  On the second panel that testified, which gave the public the chance to hear from people other than members of Congress, two of the three witnesses selected by the Republican majority were Muslim.  In fact, none of the Republican congressmen spoke more strongly than M. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, who testified that “the U.S. has a significant problem with Muslim radicalization.”  While he had “never known a Muslim that wouldn’t report somebody about to blow something up or commit an act of violence,” he did identify “small . . . but significant elements of ideology within our community that is radicalizing” and succumbing to “a culture of a lack of cooperation.”  Abdirizak Bihi, a self-identifying member of the Muslim Somali-American community, testified about his nephew’s radicalization in Minneapolis and disappearance into Somalia, where he was killed, and the family’s intimidation by Muslim leaders in the Minneapolis area who did not want them to notify authorities.  A third witness, Melvin Bledsoe, testified about his son’s conversion to Islam and radicalization prior to shooting a soldier to death outside an Arkansas recruiting center.  He appealed for help to counter radicalization even while contrasting his son with Muslim family members who were never radicalized.

Committee Republicans for their part went out of their way to shun generalizations about an entire community—from “the overwhelming majority of Muslim Americans are outstanding Americans” (Chairman King) to “The moderate Muslim is our greatest ally in fighting recruitment of Muslim youth” (Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX)).  Otherwise, they seemed understated as they devoted most of their questioning to getting the panelists to elaborate on their respective experiences.  The bluster was largely reserved for their Democratic colleagues, nearly all of whom voiced objections to the hearing’s focus on radical Islam without including other domestic terror threats.  Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) lamented that the Constitution “is in pain,” and Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA), in an apparent reference to film footage of the McCarthy hearings, asserted that the only difference between those days and “today is that those shows were in black and white and this one now is in color.”  The sight of Muslims sitting before them taking a stand against radicalization apparently did little to soften the rhetoric—not that the questioning of committee Democrats reflected much interest in what those panelists had to say.

The demagoguery fell flat, and Republicans did not attempt to counter with a similar level of vitriol.  It was a strange scene, given the absence of any major disagreement between the parties about the underlying facts.  The threat of homegrown terror fueled by radical Islam is real, and over the last two years alone, it has included the murder of 13 at the Ft. Hood army base, plots to bomb the New York City Subway and Times Square, and the previously noted Arkansas shooting.  This is not to mention the 9/11 attacks themselves, the very reason that a Committee on Homeland Security was formed in the first place.  Of course, facts are one thing, and ideology is another.  It does not discount other terrorist threats to recognize the distinctive threat of radical Islamic extremism, but House Democrats allowed their ideological rigidity to override a broader sense of perspective.  The Senate counterpart to the House committee has held 11 hearings on this issue since 2006—10 during the chairmanship of Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman—without the acrimony surrounding this one hearing on the House side.

Frank Scaturro is a former Counsel for the Constitution on the Senate Judiciary Committee and Republican candidate for the United States House of Representatives in New York’s 4^thCongressional District in 2010.