Progressives loved seeing Rep. Keith Ellison smack down his GOP congressional colleague Peter King on “Meet the Press” Sunday, insisting that profiling Muslims in the wake of the Boston bombing is not only wrong but “ineffective law enforcement.”

As Ellison warned: “Once you start saying, we’re going to dragnet or surveil a community, what you do is you ignore dangerous threats that are not in that community, and you go after people who don’t have anything to do with it.”

Of course right-wing bloggers hailed King as the winner in the debate – he wasn’t – and one sad sack even called Ellison

The fact is, we need more Keith Ellisons in Congress. Not just because he’s a great progressive voice, supporting the president but challenging him strongly on his questionable austerity politics, but also because he’s a patriotic American who’s also a Muslim. He’s crucial right now.

On “Meet the Press” David Gregory tried to pigeonhole Ellison a little: “You’re a Muslim — this concerns you on civil libertarian grounds and other areas.”

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Ellison shot back: “I’m an American,” Ellison replied. “And I’m concerned about national safety — public safety — just like everyone is.”

Still, former IRA supporter Peter King continues with his jihad against American Muslims, which apparently began when some Muslims in his district made some questionable remarks after 9/11, suggesting there had to be another explanation for the World Trade Center attacks because the backlash would only hurt Muslims. They didn’t scream, “Death to America,” they just evinced skepticism that may have simply been born of alarm at what was coming for their community – and genuine disbelief that al-Qaida could pull off such a spectacular attack.

King fictionalized his clash with local Long Island Muslims in a novel, “Veil of Tears,” which features a wave of attacks on buildings and train tunnels killing more than 100 people, sponsored by terrorists with links to a North Shore Long Island Islamic center. King still acts as though his novel is real.

“I guess you can say that the book I wrote, some of the things I worried about then, are happening now,” he told New York magazine in 2011. King’s fusion of fact and fiction makes him a little scary.