America’s first Muslim Congressman has obviously been the beneficiary of the conspicuous American tradition of tolerance, but to Minnesota’s Rep. Ellison tolerance is clearly a one way street.

The Hill reports Ellison’s Office called the Capital police to report a colleague for smoking.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) believes it is his right as a Muslim to be sworn into Congress with the Quran. But apparently, the freshman lawmaker doesn’t believe it’s Rep. Tom Tancredo’s (R-Colo.) right to smoke a cigar in his congressional office.

Ellison’s office called the Capitol Hill Police on Tancredo last Wednesday night as Tancredo was in his office smoking a cigar. The lawmakers have neighboring offices on the first floor of the Longworth House Office Building.

Tancredo was still stunned a day later. “It’s very bizarre,” said Tancredo, who has never met Ellison. “Seemed to me not a good way to say hello.”

And let’s face it. Calling the cops on a colleague takes the cake for the nerviest behavior so far among members of this year’s freshman class of Congress.

This is how it all went down. On Wednesday evening, around 6 p.m., Tancredo was preparing for his trip to Mississippi. And as he so often does, he was unwinding with a cigar.

Soon enough, however, a police officer walked in to check on the smoke. The officer told Tancredo that the officer came because he was required to do so and not because the officer wanted to. The officer had already told Ellison that Tancredo was permitted to smoke in his office. The visit was more a formality.

Tancredo said he would not stop smoking in his office. “Heck, no!” he said. “If he [Ellison] would have [had] the courtesy to say something I’m sure I would have been more accommodating to his wishes.”

To help keep his office free of impurities, Tancredo has three air purifiers. And he has no plans to meet Ellison anytime soon. “I’m sure we will, but I’m not going to make a point [of it],” the presidential hopeful said, adding that he supported Ellison’s right to be sworn in with the Quran.

The Washington Post thinks it’s really cool that Keith Ellison (formerly “Keith Hakim”) the ridiculous black poseur Muslim elected by an utterly irresponsible one-party district in Minneapolis is going to become the first Representative in United States history to take his oath of office on a copy of the Koran, and is planning to borrow a copy from the Library of Congress once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

African American conversions to Mohammedanism are, in reality, preposterous examples of flamboyant identity display, pitifully evidencing the historical illiteracy and downright bad taste of the conversos. Christianity, the European religion and cultural identity being rejected by the rebellious black man, twice abolished Slavery. Slavery has always been a fundamental institution in Islam, was spread everywhere that religion flourishes, and exists throughout the Islamic world (sometimes faintly terminologically concealed) today.

The most famous African American converso, the illustrious boxer, changed his name from that of a renowned American Abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay to Muhammad Ali, the name of more than one prominent slave-trader.

There is something which provokes distinct psychic unease at the very idea of the rise of the influence of Islam in the United States to the point where the first representative of that lamentable sect will be taking his place in the Congress of the United States, in the same house where Randolph, Webster, and Clay once sat. How can America’s culture and identity have grown so flaccid and deracinated that even a parasitical and malcontent urban welfare community would abandon its own identity and traditions in time of war, in order to elect a coreligionist of the 9/11 hijackers?

There’s a lot more which is illuminating and agreeable in the culture of Japan than in that of the True Believers, but it is difficult to imagine even the most delinquent and corrupt congressional district of the WWII era sending a Shinto-ist to Congress to take his oath on what? a sharp katana? or a bale of rice?

I find the image of an unsympathetic translation of the Alcoran, once perused with ironic skepticism by Mr. Jefferson, translated by time into the hands of a former Catholic convert to superstititous creed of the enemies of the West amusing, to say the least. Offering Jefferson’s Alcoran to Mr. Ellison-Hakim is rather in the character of inviting the newly elected Count Dracula to take his oath of office upon an early tract on vampire-hunting.

Democrats may be poised to elect Keith Ellison, a convert to Islam, to the House of Representatives from the Fifth District of Minnesota, a seat held by democrats since 1962, representing the city of Minneapolis and portions of Anoka and Ramsey counties. The candidate, who formerly called himself Keith E. Hakim, has also conveniently renounced previous associations with Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, along with inflammatory newspaper columns written in 1989 and 1990 during his period as a law student at the University of Minnesota.

Ellison’s slender primary victory featured strong support from a new Minneapolis Somali community, whose members began arriving in Minnesota in 1993 as refugees fleeing the civil war in Somalia.

If elected, he is expected to take the oath of office on the Koran.

New York Times story.