Alaska’s House Subcommittee Of The Select Committee on Legislative Ethics announced on Friday its ruling that a legislative aide for a Republican state representative “violated the Legislative Ethics Act” in her promotion of the anti-Islam group known as Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). The group, founded by noted Islamophobes Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, reportedly had an “operative” work inside a state office for “months.” The legislative aide, a woman named Karen Sawyer, gave David Heckert, the SIOA “operative,” significant access to state resources. Here’s a rundown as described by the Anchorage Daily News:

Sawyer let Heckert use her personal laptop and Internet card, and provided him a cellphone number under her family plan. She herself used state equipment to plan events for the group. She even gave Heckert her key to the Wasilla LIO so he could get in while she was out of town, the report said.

In 2011, Sawyer’s boss at the time, Alaskan state Rep. Carl Gatto (R), sponsored an “anti-Sharia” bill. Apparently, Sawyer’s preoccupation with Sharia became so intense that she reportedly said “my co-workers wonder if I’m getting obsessed with Sharia.” Indeed, she was obsessed. Beyond setting up events for the group, she also created a SIOA checking account and joined the group’s Alaska board. What’s more, the SIOA “operative” held a meeting at a state office.

While it may seem shocking that an anti-Islam group could gain such prominence inside a state office, it shouldn’t be. In 2011, CAP documented the troubling rise of anti-Islam groups like Stop Islamization of America.

Sawyer resigned shortly after the ruling was released. (HT: Alex Kane)

The anti-Muslim activist John Joseph Jay has issued a call for the mass murder of the leadership of both parties in Congress, the governors of seven states, and prominent academics, along with a demand to “burn all mosques. period.”

Jay helped in the founding of anti-Muslim activist Pam Geller’s group American Freedom Defense Initiative. AFDI is the umbrella organization of the prominent Stop the Islamization Of America (SOIA). Jay’s signature can be seen below those of Geller and fellow arch anti-Muslim activist Robert Spencer on AFDI’s incorporation document (PDF), as Charles Johnson at LGF pointed out. The P.O. Box listed for Jay is also the same as Geller’s.

But while those organizations have stopped short of calls for violence, Jay crossed way over that line in a rambling post on his blog called “start the revolution,” which fantasizes about the painful medieval deaths of perceived enemies (screenshot here, cached version here):

1.)take out the talking head media, and burn the new york times, the los angeles times and the washington post to the ground. draw and quarter the media, and shoot their remains from canons in the four directions of the prevailing winds.

rinse, lather, repeat as needed.

2.)take out all the incumbent leadership of both parties in the congress, and every self avowed socialist and communist in congress. give them all proper muslim burials at sea, just like osama bin laden.

eliminate pensions for congressional service. rinse, lather, repeat as needed.

3.)eliminate the faculty senates at harvard, yale, columbia, nyu and university of california at santa barbara. boil bill ayers, bernie dorhn and angela davis in canola oil, and feed their remains to the fishes.

they are all physical cowards. they should fall into line pretty quickly. repeat every ten years as a prophylactic, on general principle.

and,

4.)now that the “arab spring” has brought enlightenment to the middle east, send all of the muslim immigrants back to their native countries, in boxes or tourist, their choice.

burn all the mosques. period.

In a post script, he adds that he wants to “burn the editors and contributors” to the Daily Kos, throw “the living governors of new york, california, ohio, illinois, washington, florida and massachusetts into the fiery pits… from which there is no escape,” and writes, “i’ll think of something suitable for hilary clinton.”

In an update to the post, Jay responds to LGF’s Johnson “breathlessly announcing that i am advocating mass murder.” Jay makes no denial of advocating mass murder, and writes of Johnson’s charge, “even the blind hog finds an occasional acorn.”

According to the organization’s website, Geller is the executive director of American Freedom Defense Initiative, which seems to be an umbrella organization for SIOA and other anti-Muslim groups. In a post on the American Thinker from the August of last year, Geller refers to, “my associate, the attorney John Jay.”

When Jay got in trouble last summer for a separate blog post advocating the mass murder of Muslims and liberals, Robert Spencer wrote of “John Jay, a member of the SIOA Board.” Still, Spencer wrote that Jay is “not a founder or co-founder of SIOA. He has no role in the running of the organization.”

As ThinkProgress reported, Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik was influenced by American anti-Muslim activists. He cited Spencer and his blog 162 times, and Pam Geller and her blog 12 times. The two play are key players in a network of Islamophbia, explored our recent report, Fear Inc.

Speaking yesterday at Stop Islamization of America‘s rally at Ground Zero against the Park 51 Islamic cultural center, North Carolina GOP congressional candidate Ilario Pantano attempted to turn the event into an anti-Iran rally. Pantano also spun a bizarre conspiracy theory in which Imam Abdul Feisal Rauf, the leader of the Park 51 group, was in league with Iran to support the Gaza flotilla in late May that resulted in the killing of nine Turks — including one Turkish American — by Israeli commandos.

“Let’s take a moment to take a look at the person that wants to bring it [the Islamic center] here,” Pantano said, referring to Rauf. “Does anyone find it interesting that he’s also involved in the Free Gaza flotilla movement that had a made-for-TV action with Israel just as all of this was developing?”

PANTANO: But there was something else that happened. Because, and I want to stretch your imagination for a second, but every time Iran is about to face a nuclear sanction, from the EU or the UN, what happens? Something flares up with Israel! I wonder how that happens? I wonder in 2006 when Iran was about to face nuclear sanctions for their nuclear weapons program — yes folks, we want to give radical extremists nuclear weapons, it’s unconscionable to me — but remember back to 2006, a fight in Lebanon with the Israelis. Who provoked that? Iran! Iran! Think back to 2008, again, Iran about to face sanctions, who provoked attacks from Gaza, missile attacks on Israel? Iran. And radical Islam. That’s exactly right.

Ladies and gentlemen, in 2010 as Iran faced its toughest round of sanctions, we have the made-for-TV episode, with Israel rightfully trying to protect itself by maintaining a blockade to make sure murderous rockets don’t kill its innocent citizens, where did that come from? Imam Rauf is a member of the organization that has been behind all of that. We know that Iran has been complicit in all of that. I want to know where the money for this mosque is coming from!

Watch it:

Pantano’s rant was neatly emblematic of the entire event, stirring together half-truths with outright falsehoods into a stew of anti-Muslim paranoia. His claim that Imam Rauf is a member of the organization behind the Free Gaza movement is probably a reference to the Malaysian-based Perdana Global Peace Organization, a major donor to the flotilla campaign. Like much of the misinformation floating around about the Park 51 project, this claim originated with the New York Post. But a Cordoba Initiative FAQ page notes that Imam Rauf “has never been a member of this group,” explaining that “several years ago, Imam Feisal was invited to Malaysia, the most moderate Islamic country in the world, to participate in a Peace Conference sponsored by the Perdana Peace Group. He was one of the hundreds of speakers present.”

The idea that Iran was “complicit,” along with Rauf, in the Gaza flotilla is a strange new element, one that hasn’t been claimed elsewhere, let alone proven. And while it’s clear that Iran maintains supportive relationships with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, it’s simply false to present the aims and actions of the groups as identical to those of Iran, or to suggest that they have anything to do with Imam Rauf. Unless, of course, your purpose is to gin up paranoia and hatred against an Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan.