Democrats demand flotilla "terrorists" be denied entry into U.S.

Salon

From left, Anthony Weiner, Charlie Rangel, Carolyn Maloney

In case you thought a reasonable debate was still possible surrounding Israel's botched raid of a humanitarian flotilla, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York held a press event in Times Square today to prove you wrong. A half-dozen elected Democrats called on the State Department to ban every flotilla participant from entering the United States.

Well, only some of them called for everyone to be denied visas. Most of them just called for an "investigation" into the terrible terror ties of the activists aboard the flotilla, sponsored by a Turkish NGO called IHH that is not on any American watch list.

But to the assembled politicians and most of the small crowd, it is already settled -- based on decade-old investigations and foreign intelligence reports -- that IHH has ties to al-Qaida and Hamas. (Well, it does have "ties" to Hamas -- anyone looking to build anything in Gaza is forced by the Israeli siege to deal with Hamas.)

So! Here's Carolyn Maloney (at one time a theoretical liberal challenger to Kirsten Gillibrand):