Sali's apology rings hollow.

Freshman Representative Keith Ellison(D-MN) is the first Muslim in Congress. He has , at least so far, comported himself well in the face of the right-wings vicious attacks based on his religious beliefs. He is a man of peace, and it shows.

However the attacks haven't let up, and the most recent, by Rep. Bill Sali(R-ID), may be the most disturbing of all. Read about it here, here, and here.

Sali apologized for his anti-Muslim remarks, way after the fact, but never backed down from his stated belief that the U.S. was founded on Christian principles. His own website makes it very clear that he is not your ordinary bigot, but a man who holds the belief that Christians should rule this country.

I am upset for several reasons. His statements about our Founding Fathers are patently absurd and untrue. Anyone with a shred of intellectual curiosity can discover for themselves in about a minute that the framers of the Constitution were determined above all else to prohibit the rise of a national religion. They were in the main not Christians but deists, and the principles they espoused were not Christian but universal principles found in most of the worlds major religions, and which in truth evolved from the dawn of humanity, and were merely codified in religious texts such as the Bible.

The reconstructionists, like Sali, are "hellbent" to overturn our Constitution. That Sali swore an oath to protect and defend our Constitution, and says flatly that he respects the right of others to practice any religion they choose sure sounds good, but his stated beliefs belie his words. He can't have it both ways, and cannot be trusted . If he is ever made to choose between our Constitution and his beliefs, how do you think he would act? That he didn't have any qualms about attacking another member of Congress should give you a clue.

Which brings me to my next point. How did he get elected? Are the majority of voters in his district stupid or traitorous, or both? The scary fact is that Sali aint flying solo here. There are millions of Americans who buy into this dangerous reconstructionist rot, goaded and encouraged by their "religious " leaders, and other authority figures such as Bill Sali who fan the flames of Christian superiority.

It might be that Idaho's 1st Congressional district is simply overloaded with these people, and Sali's election was a statistical anomaly, or maybe there was enough voter fraud and suppression to tilt the vote count his way, but regardless of the reason, our democracy is ill-served by him and others like him. They are a "real and present danger" to our freedoms.

I certainly don't intend to disparage the good citizens from Sali's district, but I call on them to move back from Oregon (where they have likely fled) in sufficient numbers to ensure that Bill Sali is limited to one term.

In the meantime, I'm laying off potatoes. Maybe the starch clogs your brain.