Extracts from an Associated Press story in the Hindustan Times:
US Republican Cass Ballenger has blamed the breakup of his 50-year marriage partly on the stress of living near a leading American Muslim advocacy group that he and his wife worried was so close to the US Capitol that “they could blow the place up”.
The nine-term Republican lawmaker, in an interview with The Charlotte Observer published on Saturday, called the Council on American-Islamic Relations — whose headquarters are across the street from his Capitol Hill home — a “fund-raising arm” for terrorist groups and said he reported CAIR to the FBI and CIA.
In addition to CAIR, he told the newspaper that another stress on the marriage was the 1995 decision by “holier-than-thou Republicans” in the House to ban gifts from lobbyists. The meals and theatre tickets from lobbyists once meant “a social life for (congressional) wives,” Ballenger said.
Ballenger’s wife also said the move by “do-goody Republicans” to restrict the money spent on members of Congress and their spouses had helped turn Washington into a less desirable place to live.
Ballenger said in the latest interview that after the 2001 terrorist attacks, his wife was anxious about all the activity at CAIR, including people unloading boxes late at night and women “wearing hoods,” or headscarves, going in and out of the office building.
“That’s 2 1/2 blocks from the Capitol,” he said, “and they could blow it up.”
“We meet with the FBI quite often,” Hooper (A spokesperson for CAIR) said. “Our chapters have town hall meetings with the FBI to discuss discrimination and hate crimes (against Muslims).”
Unloading boxes and wearing headscarves. What will those wicked Arabs get up to next… It’s worth reading the whole article, BTW.