The recent assault on the National Security Five is only the most recent example of the fear our elites have about discussing and understanding radical Islamists. 
 
 When an orchestrated assault is launched on the right to ask questions in an effort to stop members of Congress from even inquiring about a topic — you know the fix is in. 
 
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 The intensity of the attack on Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) as well as Republican Reps. Trent Franks of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Tom Rooney of Florida and Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia is a reminder of how desperate our elites are to avoid this discussion. Yet consider this rush to silence questions in light of our history of unpleasant surprises during the Cold War. 
 
 Given all the painful things we learn about people every day and the surprises that shock even the experts (the head of the FBI anti-spy effort was a Russian spy, for example), you have to wonder why people would aggressively assert we shouldn’t ask about national security concerns. 
 
 Remember the shock in 2001 when we learned that FBI agent Robert Hanssen had been spying for 22 years — first for the Soviet Union and then the Russian Federation. This disaster came just seven years after the 1994 arrest of Aldrich Ames, a CIA counterintelligence officer who was a Soviet spy for eight years. 
 
 Why should we assume we’re in better shape today, when political correctness is passionately opposed to tough counterintelligence screening? It’s as though our leaders have forgotten every lesson of the 1930s about fascism, Nazism and communism and every lesson from 1945 to 1991 about communism. 
 
 We have replaced tough mindedness about national security with a refusal to think seriously and substituted political correctness and a “solid” assurance that people must be OK because they are “nice” and “hard working” for the systematic, intense investigations of the past. 
 
 I’m not suggesting that our primary threat is espionage. Our greatest problem is getting the wrong analysis, advice and policy proposals. It is the bias of the advisers and the disastrous policies they propose that are our gravest danger at this stage of the long struggle with radical Islamists. 
 
 Our elites refuse to even consider that the advice they are getting is biased, tainted, distorted — or just plain wrong. 
 
 The underlying driving force behind this desperate desire to stop unpleasant questions is the elite’s fear that an honest discussion of radical Islamism will spin out of control. They fear if Americans fully understood how serious radical Islamists are, they would demand a more confrontational strategy. ||||| When Politico first began spewing its pollution back in 2007, I wrote a series of posts examining its ownership and management, its heavy reliance on Drudge links, its biases, and its tawdry methods, and had a lengthy exchange with its Editor, John Harris, about those critiques. I long ago stopped doing that: aside from the handful of genuinely good reporters they have, it is widely recognized that Politico is little more than a glorified gossip rag, the belly of the media beast, the embodiment of everything vapid, reckless, and petty that drives America's media rot. Pointing out the latest examples is pointless and redundant. 
 
 But today Politico descended into territory so toxic that one would be remiss to ignore it. They gave Newt Gingrich almost 5,000 words to warn America of the grave danger posed by Muslims, to condemn "elites" for covering up the threat, and to defend the recent McCarthyite attack by GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann and four other members of Congress on Huma Abedin, the long-time Muslim aide to Hillary Clinton and wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, whom Bachmann essentially accused -- with zero evidence -- of being a secret agent for the Muslim Brotherhood (Politico gave Gingrich 2,500 words for the Op-Ed itself -- headlined: "In defense of Michele Bachmann, Muslim Brotherhood probes" -- and then another 1,800 words for an "appendix" prepared by the neocon-funded, Muslim-obsessed Foundation for the Defense of Democracies). This was the crux of the Bachmann accusations which Gingrich is defending: 
 
 "It appears that there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood," Bachmann told radio host Sandy Rios in June. "It appears that there are individuals who are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood who have positions, very sensitive positions, in our Department of Justice, our Department of Homeland Security, potentially even in the National Intelligence Agency." 
 
 Then, "Bachmann singled out Huma Abedin" and "question[ed] why Abedin . . . was able to receive a security clearance despite having family members that Bachmann believes are connected to the Brotherhood." Bachmann wrote: "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." Bachmann was joined in her crusade by four other House members (Gingirch calls them "The National Security Five," because nobody does self-victimizing, self-martyring melodrama like neocon Tough Guys). 
 
 So noxious was this attack that even people like John McCain and Wolf Blitzer -- along with Catholic bishops and other religious groups -- harshly condemned it (though it seems clear that the anger in official Washington was due more to Abedin's being deeply ensconced in Beltway power circles than it was due to revulsion over the rank Islamophobia underlying the attack; said Blitzer: "I have been very upset about a McCarthy-like attempt to smear one of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's closest aides, Huma Abedin, someone I have known for years"). Let me know when Islamophobic law enforcement and Surveillance State practices aimed at marginalized, powerless Muslims provoke similar rage in those circles. ||||| Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's comments comparing Muslims to Nazis at the GOP debate Monday night have sparked a firestorm in the blogosphere, where liberals, and even some conservatives, have pounced on the former House speaker for what they view as excessive fear mongering. 
 
 "Of course Newt is taking it too far. He is appealing to the basest instincts of a very small minority of folks," said Matthew Dowd, ABC News consultant who served as chief strategist on George W. Bush's 2004 re-election team. "Either he is doing this for political purposes to distract people from a campaign in disarray, which is bad, or he actually believes it, which is scary." 
 
 At the New Hampshire debate Monday night, Gingrich responded to questions about loyalty tests for administration officials, saying, "The Pakistani who emigrated to the U.S., became a citizen, built a car bomb which luckily failed to go off in Times Square, was asked by the federal judge, how could he have done that when he signed and when he swore an oath to the United States. And he looked at the judge and said, 'You're my enemy. I lied.'" 
 
 "Now, I just want to go out on a limb here. I'm in favor of saying to people, if you're not prepared to be loyal to the United States, you will not serve in my administration, period," Gingrich added to applause. 
 
 But Gingrich didn't stop there, despite an attempt by moderators to interject. He compared hiring Muslims to how Americans dealt with Nazis in the 1940s. 
 
 "We did this in dealing with the Nazis. We did this in dealing with the Communists. And it was controversial both times and both times we discovered after a while, you know, there are some genuinely bad people who would like to infiltrate our country. And we have got to have the guts to stand up and say, 'No,'" he concluded. 
 
 Many people have chastised Gingrich, whose senior aides resigned en masse last week, for invoking 1950s-era McCarthyism, a time during which free speech came under assault amid a heightened threat of Communism. 
 
 Muslim groups expressed outrage, saying Gingrich was merely exploiting Muslims for personal and political gain. 
 
 "It's really reprehensible when you have a mainstream presidential candidate equate Muslims with Nazis and communists," said Ibrahim Hooper, communications director at Council on American-Islamic Relations. "It is what we've come to expect from the right wing of the political faction." 
 
 CAIR also assailed GOP candidates Herman Cain and Rick Santorum for their comments on the question of sharia law taking over the U.S. court system. 
 
 Cain, the former chief executive of Godfather's Pizza, raised eyebrows earlier this year when he said he wouldn't allow Muslims in his cabinet. Cain clarified the remark Monday, saying he might want to ask a Muslim person certain questions during a job interview about their loyalty to the country, a comment that Gingrich defended. 
 
 Although he might have created a firestorm, this isn't the first time Gingrich has made such a comparison and, to many, his most recent comments are anything but surprising. 
 
 Gingrich spoke fervently in August against the proposed mosque and community center to be built near Ground Zero, saying that Muslims shouldn't be allowed to do so just as "Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington," or "we would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor." 
 
 Gingrich brought up the same example of the attempted Times Square bomber's loyalty at a debate in February, saying he "lied [about his loyalty to America] to get American citizenship." 
 
 "Your generation is going to face a long struggle I believe at least as long as the Cold War," Gingrich warned students during a debate with Howard Dean at George Washington University. "It is going to be extraordinarily dangerous and I think if our opponents get either a biological or nuclear weapon we are in real trouble and we are not today having the national dialogue that we should be having about how dangerous this is and how bad it could get." 
 
 Although his comments from Monday have come under fire, observers say they are unlikely to significantly affect his already-fledgling campaign. 
 
 The comments Monday night are "not surprising coming [from] Newt in that he seems to have been born with a limited filter between his brain and his mouth," consultant Dowd said. But "it's hard to say it will really hurt his campaign when it was already taking on water and listing in the waves." 
 
 In a sign that the campaign was taking a turn for the worst, a number of Gingrich's top aides resigned last week, citing conflicting opinions about the direction of the campaign and what they perceive as a lack of motivation on the part of Gingrich and his wife, Callista, to do heavy, time-consuming fundraising and campaigning.
– In a six-page, 2,500-word Politico op-ed (with an attached three-page, 1,800-word appendix), Newt Gingrich makes it crystal clear that he is on the side of Michele Bachmann and her four fellow members of Congress who want an inquiry into whether the government is being infiltrated by Islamic extremists. (He refers to the group as "the National Security Five.") According to Gingrich, the quick and plentiful denouncements of Bachmann's theory are simply examples "of the fear our elites have about discussing and understanding radical Islamists," he writes. "You have to wonder why people would aggressively assert we shouldn’t ask about national security concerns." "It’s as though our leaders have forgotten every lesson of the 1930s about fascism, Nazism, and communism and every lesson from 1945 to 1991 about communism," Gingrich writes, noting that "political correctness" has taken precedence over security and that the "elites" worry that "if Americans fully understood how serious radical Islamists are, they would demand a more confrontational strategy." He quotes Tony Blair and JFK (and Wikipedia, notes The Blaze incredulously), and notes the Fort Hood shootings and the Times Square car bomb as evidence that we must be more vigilant. On Salon, Glenn Greenwald decries Politico ("a glorified gossip rag") in general and Gingrich's piece in particular, calling it a "bigoted, McCarthyite screed." Click for Gingrich's full piece, or Greenwald's response.