Yesterday, Indiana Rep. Dan Burton (R) proclaimed in a speech on the House floor that the U.S. is “at war.” However, Burton wasn’t talking about U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor is it readily evident that Burton was simply engaging in hyperbolic rhetoric. Instead, Burton went on a furious rampage about how the federal government will not allow federal agents to enter Mexico armed. “We shouldn’t be asking our CIA, DIA, DEA agents to go into Mexico to fight the drug dealers…and tell them they don’t even have a weapon to protect themselves,” stated Burton. According to him, the U.S. is fighting a war on U.S. and Mexican soil that may require the use of armed force:

We’re in a war down there on that border. If you talk to the people in Texas, they will tell you — there is a war between us and the drug dealers and the thugs that are coming across that line into our country. And, there’s a high suspicion that we’re seeing al-Qaeda and Taliban type terrorists coming across the border into the United States.

It’s a war make no mistake about it — the Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said — and it’s happening on American soil. In this country! [...] We’re never going to solve that border problem unless we realize that it’s an area that we have to focus on, that it’s a war, and that our citizens are in danger down there.

Watch it:

To begin with, the Obama administration doesn’t arm federal agents operating in Mexico because it’s against Mexican law, which prohibits foreign diplomats or agents from carrying weapons or engaging in law enforcement activities. Ever since U.S. intervention in the Mexican Revolution, Mexico has been wary about allowing foreign officials to arm themselves while conducting business in the country. Given the fact that some U.S. politicians have actually floated the idea of U.S. military involvement in Mexico, it’s understandable that there may be some political unease associated with modifying the restrictions. It’s also worth noting that the federal agent who was killed in Mexico wasn’t there to “fight the drug cartels.” He was there for a training exercise.

Attorney General Eric Holder actually suggested asking Mexico to allow dozens of U.S. federal agents working there to be armed. Mexican President Felipe Calderon didn’t make any promises, but he did affirm that, “We definitely have to find a way to elevate the level of protection for all agents who, according to law, work against criminality. We will, of course, analyze alternatives and talk to the Mexican congress, which ultimately has the last word.” Ultimately, it seems like the best solution would be for the U.S. to tighten its gun restrictions and prevent our own weapons from flowing down south.

Meanwhile, as I pointed out yesterday, the U.S. side of the Mexican border is “safer than it’s ever been.” While Burton cites anecdotal evidence to back up his claims, hard data suggests quite the opposite. Counties along the southwest border have some of the lowest rates of violent crime per capita in the nation and those rates have dropped by more than 30 percent since the 1990s while immigration has soared. Border agents do carry guns.

While the murder of border agent Brian Terry was certainly tragic, there have also been several cases in which it appears border agents used excessive force and killed unarmed Mexican teenagers.

Today, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman began his “personal quest” to scrutinize the patriotism of American Muslims through his hearings on the radicalization in the U.S. Muslim community. King insists that his pursuit is “the logical response” to the “threat level” posed by the community, adding “it makes no sense to talk about other types of extremism, when the main threat to the United States today is talking about al Qaida.”

Not only are King’s assumptions incredibly inaccurate, a former Department of Defense official in the Bush Administration states that his crusade is helping homegrown terrorism. Jennifer Bryson, who spent a few years doing counter-terrorism work while working for the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2003 to 2008, pointed out that King’s fear-mongering is “dividing the world between Muslims and non-Muslims,” the “same tactic” used by Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to recruit:

“King risks helping to promote precisely the narrative Osama bin Laden and his sympathizers try to promote, namely dividing the world between Muslims and non-Muslims,” said Jennifer Bryson, a former counterterrorism official at the Defense Department. Al-Qaeda has used the same tactic as a recruiting tool, she said.

While the issue merits attention by Congress, said Matthew Levitt, former deputy chief of the Treasury Department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, King’s approach is “semantically shaped to point a finger at an entire community.”

Matthew Levitt served as the Treasury Department’s deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis under the Bush Administration. The American Muslim community’s practices and participation in mainstream society has not only served to successfully combat homegrown terrorism but to help eliminate the risk. For instance, the Center for Strategic and International Studies points out that families of the “Northern Virginia Five” extremists reached out to CAIR — the group that King paints as extremist — who then alerted the FBI, “cooperation” that “has proved vital in facilitating authorities’ initial investigation of the plot.”

Even the U.S. attorney general in a New York district not far from Ground Zero is “disturbed” by King’s hearings. He told the Daily Beast’s Jonathan Alter that the Muslim community there “routinely provide the FBI and prosecutors with valuable leads and evidence” but that now he must “spend valuable time reassuring local imams” who “are terribly worried about the stigma coming from King’s hearings” that the “U.S. government means them not harm.”

As Bryson indicates, by aggressively marginalizing Muslims in America, King actively complicates the vibrant cooperation between the Muslim community and law enforcement and disseminates stereotypes that foment the us-vs.-them mentality feeding homegrown terrorism in the first place. Doing so not only emboldens the small extremist minority within a community but tramples on the patriotism and humanity of the majority.

At today’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing, a parade of Democratic members, such as Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), and Rep. Lauren Richardson (D-CA), have reminded the public that Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is someone who previously said there are “too many mosques” in America.

At one point during the hearing, a colleague of King’s, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), claimed that “no one” who was attending the hearing has ever claimed that there were too many mosques in America. King then interrupted to assert that he had at one point claimed that there are too many mosques not cooperating with law enforcement, but not that there are too many mosques in America:

ROGERS: At no point have I ever heard a member of this committee on either side of the aisle assert that we have too many mosques, or too many Muslims, or anything of that kind, so I don’t know where the ranking member got that idea —

KING: If the gentleman would yield from I think what the ranking member was doing I said that there are too many mosques that don’t cooperate with law enforcement. I think testimony today has backed that up. I never said there were too many mosques in America.

Yet nearly four years ago, King clearly said that there were too many mosques in the United States:

KING: We have unfortunately, we have a, uh, too many mosques in this country, too many people that are sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully. I think there’s been a lack of full cooperation from too many people in the Muslim community. There’s a real threat here in this country.

ThinkProgress has put together a video factcheck of King’s claim. Watch it:

At the start of today’s Islamophobic hearings, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) attempted to justify singling out the Muslim American community while disregarding terrorism that is emanating from other communities. In his opening statement, he claimed that over the past two years, there have not been any terrorist plots by neo-Nazi groups:

KING: There is no equivalency of threat between Al Qaeda and neo-Nazis, environmental extremists, and other isolated madmen. [...] Indeed, by the Justice Department’s own record, not one terror-related case in the last two years involved neo-Nazis, environmental extremists, or anti-war groups.

Watch it:

King’s statement would be a surprise to the residents of Fall River, Massachussetts. This past December, Justin Vieira, who hung a Nazi flag in his room and engaged in white racist rhetoric, “broke a natural gas line and threatened to blow up a three-decker” and was arrested after a multiple-hour standoff with police officers:

Justin Vieira, 29, of 101 Bogle St., also is accused of threatening neighbors with a rifle. [...] Vieira is charged with kidnapping, assault with a dangerous weapon, bomb threat, disturbing the peace while armed, assault and battery and resisting arrest. [...] Lt. David A. Gouveia said officers Jon Rose, James Donovan and Sgt. Roger Lafleur responded to the area of 101 Bogle St. at about 12:40 a.m. for a report of a man wearing camouflage clothing and waving a rifle. “The male was involved in a domestic incident with his girlfriend and was now threatening neighbors with the rifle,” Gouveia said. [...] “Vieira hung a Nazi flag out the window, started barricading the doors, shouted ‘Heil Hitler’ and turned off the lights,” Gouveia said.

Veiera’s threatened terror plot joins those by four other Neo-Nazis or Neo-Nazi sympathizers since September 2009. As ThinkProgress previously reported, there have actually been twice as many terror plots by non-muslim terrorists like white supremacists and anti-government extremists since 9/11.