There's a well-known truism that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Unwilling to give up his irrational hate of Muslims or the uncomfortable parallels to Senator Joe McCarthy's hearings of the 50s, Rep Peter King is holding hearings beginning Monday on the "threat" of terrorism stemming from Muslim-Americans.

Rep. Peter King of New York defended on Sunday a congressional hearing he will hold this week on the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism that focuses on Muslim-Americans, calling it an issue "which is not being talked about publicly" and needs to be. "People in this country are being self-radicalized, whether it's Major Hasan or whether it's Shahzad or whether it was Zazi in New York," King said on CNN's "State of the Union." "These were all people who were identifying, in one way or another, with al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. So it's an international movement with elements here in the United States." King was referring to Army Major Nidal Malik Hassan, a military psychiatrist whose shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009 claimed 13 lives; Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born man living in Colorado charged in 2009 with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction; and Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born man living in suburban Connecticut, whose attempt to blow up a bomb in Times Square last June was foiled.

I have no problem whatsoever with the notion of having a hearing on the threats of domestic terrorism, but for cryin' out loud, how intellectually dishonest of King to focus on one religious group and ignore the fact that the vast majority of domestic terrorism comes not from radicalized Muslim-Americans but from radicalized right wingnuts.

Keith Ellison does a yeoman's job trying to temper King's hate-on for Muslims, but this kind of wingnuttery requires a statement from the White House too. So Sunday, we got it: