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Secy of State Hillary Clinton and top aide Huma AbedinRepublican Representative from Minnesota Michelle Bachmann may have played one right-wing theocratic card too many in her unsubstantiated attack against Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin. Republican Ed Rollins, short-lived manager of Bachmann’s presidential campaign wrote in FOX News today:

I have been a practitioner of tough politics for many decades. There is little that amazes me and even less that shocks me. I have to say that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s outrageous and false charges against a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin reaches that threshold.

Her unsubstantiated charge against Abedin, a widely respected top aide to Secretary Hillary Clinton, accusing her of some sort of far-fetched connection to the Muslim brotherhood, is extreme and dishonest.

Having worked for Congressman Bachman’s campaign for president, I am fully aware that she sometimes has difficulty with her facts, but this is downright vicious and reaches the late Senator Joe McCarthy level. (Joe McCarthy falsely made claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies inside the State Department in the early 1950’s. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to “condemn” McCarthy on two counts.)

Bachmann’s Grotesque Attack

Rep. Michele Bachmann tears a page from the national health care bill during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol March 21, 2012 in Washington, D.C. Photogaph by Win McNamee/Getty Images.Rep. MIchelle Bachmann supports the view of Frank Gaffney and other “anti-Islamofascists” that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the United States government. Specifically, Bachmann challenged the allegiance of Huma Abedin, who is married to former New York state rep Anthony Weiner, a strong supporter of Israel. In her 16-page letter written to fellow Mn Rep and Muslim Keith Ellison, Bachmann wrote:

Given the reasonable assumption that Ms. Abedin has a high-level security clearance, as a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence I am particularly interested in exactly how, given what we know from the international media about Ms. Abedin’s documented family connections with the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, she was able to avoid being disqualified for a security clearance.

John McCain Defends Huma Abedin

In a rare move against a Congressional colleague, Senator John McCain took to the Senate floor today, to speak directly about Michelle Bachmann’s charges. Slate quotes McCain:

These sinister accusations rest solely on a few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations of members of Huma’s family, none of which have been shown to harm or threaten the United States in any way. These attacks on Huma have no logic, no basis, and no merit. And they need to stop now.