On the floor of the Senate Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) repudiated Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) McCarthyesque witch-hunt to root out the alleged Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government. The flap started when Bachmann all but directly accused Secretary Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin of working on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood in a letter with four colleagues to the State Department’s Inspector General demanding an investigation.

While some Democrats have taken Bachmann to task for the charges, some Republicans, like House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers (MI), lauded her witch-hunt.

Enter McCain, who put his foot down today and chided his fellow Republicans for the accusations against Abedin. McCain brought up his personal relationship with Abedin, adding that she “represents what is best about America.” He noted Bachmann’s letter and its sourcing to a report from notorious Islamophobe Frank Gaffney‘s Center for Security Policy (CSP). He then said:

To say that the accusations made in both documents are not substantiated by the evidence they offer is to be overly polite and diplomatic about it. It is far better, and more accurate, to talk straight: These allegations about Huma Abedin, and the report from which they are drawn, are nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable citizen, a dedicated American, and a loyal public servant.

Watch the video:

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) lead the charge against Bachmann, demanding “credible, substantial evidence” to back up her accusations. Bachmann then penned a long letter responding to Ellison, which he rightly dismissed as “16 pages worth of repeated false allegations. Just regurgitated nonsense.”

But Bachmann’s response to Ellison did adjust her sources. While many of the 59 footnotes are still dubious — such as those linking to the Islamophobe Steve Emerson’s group, the Investigative Project — she dropped the sole source cited in her initial letter to the State Department: Gaffney‘s CSP. In his request for information, Ellison had noted that Gaffney — a sometime Bachmann adviser and booster — had been “widely discredited.” McCain, who said he had worked with CSP and considers Gaffney a “friend” nonetheless called the accusations in the report “scurrilous.”

When Rep. Keith Ellison (R-MN) asked his colleague Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to produce “credible, substantial evidence” of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “deep penetration” into the U.S. government, she responded with a 16-page letter. In her new letter — a follow-up on letters she wrote with colleagues to the Inspectors General of four government agencies demanding they look into her chargers — Bachmann denied she had suggested Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin is linked to the Brotherhood and gave 59 footnoted sources for her claim.

On Anderson Cooper’s CNN show last night, Ellison responded to Bachmann’s latest salvo, saying her accusations were “simply scare-mongering” and compared her quest to root out Muslim Brotherhood infiltrators to Sen. Joe McCarthy’s infamous witch-hunt for Communist agents. Ellison went on::

COOPER: You asked for a full accounting of the evidence these members of Congress were using to make their claims. You got a 16- page letter back. Does their evidence hold up?

ELLISON: No, it’s 16 pages worth of nothing. It’s 16 pages worth of repeated false allegations. Just regurgitated nonsense. And, you know, it doesn’t — 16 pages doesn’t take nothing and turn it into something. It’s still nothing…

COOPER: Have you seen any evidence of “deep penetration” — that was the words that Congressman Bachmann used — “deep penetration” by the Muslim Brotherhood into the security apparatus of the United States?

ELLISON: No, it’s not true. It doesn’t exist. It’s a phantom.

Watch the whole interview here:

Cooper also related a statement from Abedin’s office responding to Bachmann’s allegations:

They are nothing but vicious and disgusting lies that have no place in reasonable political discourse. And anyone who traffics in them should be ashamed of themselves.

Ellison was right: Bachmann’s response simply rehashed the same charges against Abedin and others. Salon, which initially reported the letter, spelled out the absurdity of the allegations.

Bachmann denied the clearly implied charge that Abedin worked on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. But in her first letter to the State Department, she named Abedin’s torturous and distant family connections to the group and said, “Her position affords her routine access to the Secretary and to policy-making.” She added, in the next sentence, that the Obama adminisrtation has “taken actions recently that have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests.”

Responding to Ellison, Bachmann denied she was accusing Abedin directly and said her concern was simply about the security clearance process. She wrote that family members are already examined as “potentially disqualifying conditions for obtaining security clearance, which undoubtably Ms. Abedin had to obtain to function in her position.” In other words, the process she’s concerned about is already in place, but not to her liking, leaving one with little else to assume but that she is indeed making sordid implications about Abedin. Ellison called this “the worst of guilt by association.”

When Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) recently escalated her paranoid quest to root out the Muslim Brotherhood from the U.S. government, she named names. There’s a problem, however, when conspiracy theorists get into specifics, people will start demanding facts to back up their wild-eyed assertions.

That’s exactly what her colleague form the Minnesota Congressional delegation Rep. Keith Ellison (D) did when he responded to her letter to the State Department insinuating that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin (the wife of former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner) was at the heart of the Brotherhood’s infiltration of the State Department. “If she has sources for this type of information,” Ellison said in a statement, “she owes it to the country to reveal them to the proper authorities, but definitely not this way.”

Now, Ellison has taken his request for specifics directly to Bachmann and the co-signers of her letters to State and other government departments — Reps. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Thomas Rooney (R-FL), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) also signed. Ellison also calls out the source of their information, arch-Islamophobe Frank Gaffney. Ellison wrote:

I request that you provide my office a full accounting of the sources you used to make the serious allegations against the individuals and organizations in your letters. If there is not credible, substantial evidence for your allegations, I sincerely hope that you will publically clear their names.

(Read the whole letter here.)

After listing a host of ludicrous allegations made by Gaffney, Ellison wrote, “Mr. Gaffney’s views have been widely discredited, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and conservative organizations.” Gaffney was repudiated by the American Conservative Union, and barred from the powerhouse’s annual conservative CPAC confab.

Gaffney’s clearly pleased with Bachmann’s witch-hunt, soliciting support from other Members of Congress, like Republican House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers (MI), on his radio show. That he would serve as a source of information for what Ellison calls “serious allegations” is indeed troubling.

It seems now that Bachmann and her coterie of Republican Congressional conspiracy theorists will either have to put up, or shut up.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has been known to promote paranoid conspiracy theories and in recent weeks, she bought into one promoted by Islamophobic chieftain Frank Gaffney that the U.S. government has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

In letters to several government agencies demanding an investigation, Bachmann and several of her GOP colleagues targeted specific names and individuals in the government. The letter to the State Department Inspector General singles out Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and asserts that Abedin is the perfect example of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “deep penetration” in the administration. Bachmann’s letter claims that three of Abedin’s family members are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and implies that Abedin’s proximity to Clinton is no coincidence as the department has “taken actions recently that have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests.”

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) called out Bachmann for her fear campaign:

If she has sources for this type of information, she owes it to the country to reveal them to the proper authorities, but definitely not this way. If she doesn’t have this type of information, she should not be whipping up fear and hysteria about a very important matter.

Abedin was born in the United States, attended college at George Washington University in Washington D.C. and the popular Clinton aide is also married to former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner (NY). But the letter, co-signed by Reps. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Thomas Rooney (R-FL), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), offered no evidence of Abedin’s alleged nefarious connections, and instead cited Gaffney’s Muslim Brotherhood in America website.

–Angela Guo

Many of Washington’s more hawkish voices have sought to downplay or drown out discussions about a possible military attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Even as the Obama administration has kept all options on the table regarding iran’s nuclear program, presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign attacked the administration for trying to have an honest discussion of the possible consequences of a military strike.

Now, three Members of Congress — Reps. John Conyers (D-MI), Keith Ellison (D-MN), and Barbara Lee (D-CA) — are introducing an amendment to an intelligence authorization bill that would demand a government report about the possible consequences of an attack. Conyers and Ellison, among others, also used the amendment process to tag the Defense authorization — another big appropriations bill likely to pass — with language stating that Congress was not authorizing war with Iran.

The first public comments by members on the amendment, which has the support of pro-peace groups, could come this afternoon when the Rules Committee meets to decide on its inclusion in the larger bill. The amendment, Section 306 of the new bill, reads in full that:

Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of National Intelligence shall submit to the congressional intelligence committees a report containing an assessment of the consequences of a military strike against Iran.

The Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has already said that Iran has not made a decision to build a nuclear weapon — an estimate in line with reported U.S. assessments and also the U.N. atomic watchdog and Israeli assessments — and made clear that he thinks Iran can be dissuaded from building a bomb.

But his views on the consequences of a strike are unlikely to satisfy militaristic voices in Congress. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a prominent hawk on Iran, publicly disagreed with Clapper’s Iran assessments during a hearing this winter. Last year, Graham called on Clapper to resign.

While President Obama, like others, considers a potential Iranian nuclear weapon a threat, this Spring he lamented the “loose talk of war” and called on those who are pushing an attack on Iran to hold open discussions about the possible consequences:

If some of these folks think that it’s time to launch a war, they should say so and they should explain to the american people exactly why they would do that and what the consequences would be.

Instead of hawkish bluster, the Obama administration maintains its options while pushing a negotiated diplomatic solution, which the administration considers the “best and most permanent way” to end the crisis. That’s because Israeli and American experts have noted that attacking could push Iran into building a weapon, and potentially ignite a regional war. Those are exactly the sorts of potential consequences of an attack on Iran that the Obama administration has called for a forthright conversation on, which Conyers, Ellison and Lee are now bolstering. And its exactly the conversation the hawks don’t want to have.

While Senate hawks are pushing a resolution that some have interpreted as “creeping toward an authorization of military force against Iran,” lawmakers in the House are starting a campaign to promote a diplomatic solution to prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons. Reps. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Walter Jones (R-NC) are asking House members to sign on to a letter urging Presidnet Obama not to start a war with Iran.

In an impassioned speech on the House floor yesterday, Ellison quoted Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, former Israeli intelligence chief Meir Dagan, and retired General Anthony Zinni all warning of the consequences of attacking Iran. “It would be unwise for the United States to enter into a new war just as we’re ending two others,” he said:

If you listen to the rhetoric around Washington and the Nation, Mr. Speaker, it is literally impossible to not hear the drumbeat of war with Iran. The rhetoric in Washington about the military strike against Iran leads me to think that we may be sliding into a new war yet. … [W]henever you speak against a war, your patriotism is challenged and your courage is challenged until they find out that you were right. [...]

But the heated rhetoric we hear around our city and the events on the world stage are deeply troubling, Mr. Speaker. News headlines read, “The Coming Attack on Iran.” Pundits discuss the possibility with shocking casualness, and I am alarmed by this.

America, we have seen this movie before, and, Mr. Speaker, it doesn’t end well. Two months after leaving Iraq, we have already forgotten the consequences of war it appears. If you need a reminder, talk to a veteran or a veteran’s widow.

Watch the speech:

As Ellison noted in his speech, Iran with nuclear weapons threatens regional security and international nonproliferation norms. But the Minnesota congressman is right. The drumbeat for war with Iran is getting louder and longer, particularly on Capitol Hill and out on the GOP presidential campaign trail.

But, just like the prelude to war in Iraq, it’s also made its way into the mainstream media. “Haven’t we seen this movie before?” the Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone asks in a story today. “It sure feels like 2002 for anyone who was around then and is now scanning newspaper headlines or watching TV talking-heads discuss a possible Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities — an act which could pull the U.S. into another thorny Middle East military conflict.”

While the IAEA has expressed serious concern about military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper during Senate testimony yesterday repeated his position that Iran has not yet decided whether to develop a nuclear weapon. (HT: Lara Friedman)