Anti-refugee backlash at local level turns ugly

[deminks]

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/anti-refugee-backlash-local-level-turns-ugly

(snip)

This may seem like an offensive joke, but the Roanoke mayor was apparently quite serious. “I’m reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from Isis [sic] now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then,” Bowers said in a statement.

Unlike most of the high-profile refugee critics, the mayor is a Democrat – who was promptly removed from Hillary Clinton campaign’s Virginia leadership council.

And if there’s a contest for Worst Reaction to Paris, David Bowers will obviously be a top contender, but he won’t be the only challenger. In Missouri, state Rep. Mike Moon (R) is calling for a special legislative session to stop “the potential Islamization of Missouri.”

In Tennessee, state Rep. Glen Casada (R), the chairman of the state House Republican Caucus, yesterday called for the National Guard to round up recent Syrian refugees who might already be in Tennessee, so they could be forcibly removed – even if they’ve done literally nothing wrong.

Perhaps the ugliest situation of them all has unfolded in Louisiana, where Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Baton Rouge “has received threats because they help Syrian refugees resettling” in the state.

(end snip)

I am at a loss for words.

[FSogol]

1. Very sad and especially sad that the xenophobia is present in our party too. n/t

[JEB]

2. Those guys are so scared they

are shitting a ring around themselves. Old cowboy saying.

[Tanuki]

3. The article mentions Tennessee's GOP state rep Glen Casada, which is no surprise,

as he is an all-purpose bigot. For example:
http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/state-legislation-filed-block-proposed-metro-nondiscrimination-bill
"..
State legislation filed to block proposed Metro nondiscrimination bill
Monday, February 7, 2011 at 5:56pm
By Jeff Woods
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Rep. Glen Casada filed his promised state legislation Monday to block a proposed ordinance that would prohibit discrimination against gays and lesbians by companies that do business with Metro Nashville government.

“It’s up to the local business to decide what they will and will not do,” Casada, R-College Grove, told The City Paper in January of his bill, which then was in the drafting stage. “The local government won’t be able to implement their morality on our local businesses.”

Casada’s legislation bars any Tennessee city from adopting anti-discrimination employment policies that protect classes other than those named under the federal Civil Rights Act. That law bans discrimination against workers based on race, creed, color, religion, sex, age or national origin.

Metro Council members Mike Jameson, Jamie Hollin and Erica Gilmore want to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of Nashville’s protected classes. Their bill goes before the Metro Council on Feb. 15. It was filed after Belmont University came under fire over the departure of women’s soccer coach Lisa Howe, who revealed she and her same-sex partner are having a child."

(The commments are refreshing. )