An anti-Muslim ad campaign is about to start a new run in the New York City subway, in spite of protests from Metropolitan Transit Authority officials. The ads, which also ran in San Francisco last month, have garnered much criticism from community activists.

The MTA refused to approve the ad campaign earlier this year, but, citing the First Amendment, a federal court ruled that the MTA must run the ads. Now, in the wake of tensions over mocking depictions of the Prophet Mohammad, 10 more NYC subway cars will soon have to display the ad posters, which imply that Muslims are “uncivilized” and call upon commuters to “Support Israel…Defeat Jihad.”

The American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), founded by Pamela Geller of the group Stop Islamization of America, created the ads. (Geller is featured prominently in CAP’s recent report on the Islamophobia network in the United States.) AFDI celebrates their new campaign on its website, calling MTA “craven quislings.”

AFDI bought ad-space in Washington, DC to run the same campaign, but the the DC metro transit authority delayed running the ads ads “out of a concern for public safety, given current world events.” In New York, the MTA is looking at changes to their advertisement policy to allow for similar protections. For now, spokesman Aaron Donovan says “our hands are tied.” The ads are due to appear next week.

– Nate Niemann

David Horowitz’s anti-Muslim rhetoric has been well-docmented as he is featured prominently in CAP’s report last year on the Islamophobia network in the United States. So it’s no surprise then that on Fox News today Horowitz pushed the right-wing conspiracy theory that Huma Abedin, top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is a Muslim Brotherhood plant.

Fox Host Megyn Kelly referred to Horowitz as a “civil rights activist” and asked what he thought of the police questioning of the man behind the anti-Islam film that caused recent protests in the Middle East. “This is one of the most disgraceful moments in the history of the American presidency,” Horowitz said (the filmmaker, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, answered police questions voluntarily). Horowitz then brought up Abedin:

HOROWITZ: An American ambassador has been raped and tortured and murdered and the White House is focusing on or the Justice Department is focusing on a filmmaker. And you have to ask yourself, isn’t it not the fact that the chief adviser on Muslim affairs for Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State is a Muslim Brotherhood operative and the Obama administration has turned over Egypt to the Muslim Brotherhood which is a Nazi organization –

At this point, Kelly interrupted Horowitz, not to say he was wrong about Abedin but only to say “there are questions” as to whether she is a Muslim Brotherhood plant. Watch the clip:

No, Huma Abedin is not part of a Muslim Brotherhood plot to take over the U.S. government and no, David Horowitz is not a civil rights activist.

Senate Republicans prevented a veterans’ jobs bill from coming to a vote today by forcing a budget point of order vote. Democrats came up 2 votes short of the 60 needed to defeat the GOP’s budget measure.

The Veterans Jobs Corps bill — which is part of President Obama’s push to secure jobs for veterans — would have provided $1 billion over five years to hire 20,000 young veterans for public lands jobs and prioritize vets for first responder jobs such as police, firefighter, or EMT. The measure would have also provided young vets access to the infrastructure with which to assist in job searches, such as access to computers, internet and career services advisers.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a vets group that supported the legislation, called the GOP move “a huge disappointment,” adding, “Today, politics won over helping vets.”

While only five Republicans voted with the Democrats to waive the GOP budget point of order measure, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) led the GOP opposition. “When we find ourselves in $16 trillion of debt and we pay for a five-year bill over 10 years, we make the problem worse,” he said.

However, Veterans Jobs Corps bill co-sponsor Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) said on the Senate floor today that “this bill is fully paid for and does not violate pay-go rules.” (The New York Times said Murray’s aides say “say the program will be paid for by recovering more money from tax-delinquent Medicare providers and forcing big tax deadbeats to pay up before receiving passports.”)

Murray even tried to include most of the provisions of a competing Republican bill but Democrats still ran into opposition. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he would block the measure until the Pakistani doctor that aided the CIA in looking for Osama bin Laden was freed, while Coburn claimed the bill would have no chance of passing the House so it wasn’t worth the effort.

“I’ve been surprised at the many obstacles and weird arguments that have been thrown at us,” Murray told the Washington Post.

The jobless rate for Iraq and Afghanistan war vets, while steadily declining, is still higher than the national average, yet congressional Republicans remain “resolute in their commitment to deny the Democrats anything that looks like an accomplishment in an election year.”

In an editorial last weekend referring to today’s vote, the New York Times said, “We’ll know then whether good sense prevailed, or the wheels have come completely off the Congressional machine.” It looks like the Republicans have made sure of the latter.

A Republican congressional nominee laid the blame for turmoil in the Middle East on “girly men” in the White House.

North Carolina State Sen. David Rouzer (R), the GOP nominee in the state’s 7th congressional district, levied the charge during a speech at a Tea Party Express rally in Wilmington on Sunday. If Romney is elected, Rouzer said, those perpetrating recent violence in the Middle East are going to “cut it out a little bit [...] because now we have real men in the White House.” An audience member shouted “No girly men!” prompting Rouzer’s approval: “That’s right, no girly men.”

ROUZER: When we get [Romney and Ryan] in you are going to see a big change, you’re going to see number one that America is going to be respected again around the world. You’re going to see all this turmoil that’s taking place, you’re going to see them look up and say guess what, the American people have spoken and maybe we need to cut it out a little bit, maybe we need to tone it down a little bit, because now we have real men in the White House.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: No girly men!

ROUZER: That’s right, no girly men.

Watch it:

When President Obama was asked by reporters in December about GOP charges that his foreign policy isn’t tough enough, he responded curtly, “Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement.”

Rouzer first earned notoriety in June when he pushed a bill through the North Carolina Senate that banned the state from using scientific predictions of upcoming sea-level rise. Stephen Colbert lauded the move in a Colbert Report segment: “If your science gives you a result you don’t like, pass a law saying the result is illegal. Problem solved.”