From HuffPo:
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) joined Herman Cain among the ranks of Republican pols who are unimpressed with the Occupy Wall Street protesters and their nationwide counterparts, calling them a "ragtag mob" and "anarchists" on the Laura Ingraham radio show Friday.
"The fact is these people are anarchists. They have no idea what they're doing out there," King said. "They have no sense of purpose other than a basically anti-American tone and anti-capitalist. It's a ragtag mob basically."
As Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler would say before Erin Burnett ripped off their retired Weekend Update bit for her new show:
Unfortunately, yes, Peter King, REALLY did take time out from planning his next McCarthy-inspired Muslim Inquisition hearing to disparage the #occupywallstreet protesters as "anti-American" simply for expressing a viewpoint with which he disagrees. He even called the group "a bunch of angry 1960s do-overs," which while I can't claim to exactly understand, sounds kind of like a compliment to me. (Who wouldn't want to a do-over of the 1960s where we never escalated the war in Vietnam, where the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations never happened, and where Nixon's 1968 election via the Southern strategy was defeated?)
But anyway, if #occupywallstreet really WAS a "ragtag mob" of "anarchists" and "anti-American," why does Peter King act like these descriptions would preclude him from supporting their movement?
As was noted of King during coverage of his Muslim hearings earlier this year:
Long before he became an outspoken voice in Congress about the threat from terrorism, he was a fervent supporter of a terrorist group, the Irish Republican Army.
“We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry,” Mr. King told a pro-I.R.A. rally on Long Island, where he was serving as Nassau County comptroller, in 1982. Three years later he declared, “If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.”
Well that's interesting.
Peter King takes five seconds to brand it anti-American anarchy for a group of peaceful protesters to hold up signs and demonstrate in Lower Manhattan against Wall Street greed, but it never caused any pangs in his conscience when he associated with a foreign terror group that was willing to kill people to spread its message.
As Mr. King, a Republican, rose as a Long Island politician in the 1980s, benefiting from strong Irish-American support, the I.R.A. was carrying out a bloody campaign of bombing and sniping, targeting the British Army, Protestant paramilitaries and sometimes pubs and other civilian gathering spots. His statements, along with his close ties to key figures in the military and political wings of the I.R.A., drew the attention of British and American authorities.
A judge in Belfast threw him out of an I.R.A. murder trial, calling him an “obvious collaborator,” said Ed Moloney, an Irish journalist and author of “A Secret History of the I.R.A.” In 1984, Mr. King complained that the Secret Service had investigated him as a “security risk,” Mr. Moloney said.
Yet he thinks #occupywallstreet is a threat to American security?
Really!?!