AS THEY SAY, TIMING IS EVERYTHING – AT 11:12 P.M. ET:  And some people just don't have it.  The Mideast is in flames, Muslims are being slaughtered, and there was a rally in Times Square today.  What was it about, you ask.  Well, even if you didn't ask, you'll get an answer. 

NEW YORK (AP) -- Some 300 people gathered in Times Square on Sunday to speak out against a planned congressional hearing on Muslim terrorism, criticizing it as xenophobic and saying that singling out Muslims, rather than extremists, is unfair.

Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and the imam who had led an effort to build an Islamic center near the World Trade Center site were among those who addressed the crowd.

"Our real enemy is not Islam or Muslims," said the imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf. "The enemy is extremism and radicalism and radical ideology."

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Peter King, has said that affiliates of al-Qaida are radicalizing some American Muslims. He's planned hearings starting Thursday on the threat he says they pose.

COMMENT:  Not a word about the slaughter in the Mideast.  Instead, we get this fiction about American Islamophobia.  Oh, yeah, right.  Muslims in America are being rounded up by the thousands. 

I don't know of another country that would have shown the tolerance this nation did after 9-11.  Right in New York City, where almost 3,000 were murdered in a few hours, Muslims continued going to their mosques without anyone bothering them. 

This "rally" was directed, as the story noted, against the upcoming hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims.  Before World War II there were investigations into the infiltration of the German-American community by Nazi agents.  The hearings were valid and important, and no one believed that we'd become Germanophobic.  Some of our leading commanders in World War II, like Dwight Eisenhower and Chester Nimitz, were German-Americans. 

There is plenty to be investigated.  Peter King is a responsible guy.  He can be counted on to run a clean, careful probe, and he should be encouraged.

March 6, 2011