PSoTD

They get themselves, rather than their issues, talked about at the Capitol...

SALEM, Ore. — A Portland Muslim leader is asking a pesticide-industry lobbyist to retract a statement in which she warned that Senate Democrats had declared "jihad" against Republicans over an environmental dispute.

Shahriar Ahmed, president of the Bilal Mosque in Beaverton, said use of the term in an e-mail dealing with a controversy over a pesticide-use reporting program perpetuates negative stereotypes about Muslims.

"The term 'jihad' here was used intentionally to aggravate the situation," Ahmed said during a news conference yesterday.

The word has been used by Muslim extremists to describe holy war, but Ahmed said mainstream Muslims use the Arabic word to describe a person's internal struggle to do good.

Ahmed went to the Capitol to criticize an e-mail sent by lobbyist Paulette Pyle of the pesticide-user group Oregonians for Food and Shelter.

In a July 15 e-mail to about 500 farmers and foresters, Pyle warned that "the Senate Democrats have declared 'JIHAD' against the Republicans because they are opposed to [Pesticide Use Reporting System] funding."

Pyle said she meant nothing derogatory about Muslims and only used the term in an e-mail to members and supporters of the pesticide group as a way to highlight the issue.

"When I wrote that e-mail, it was like, 'I've got to say something to get your attention,' " she said, referring to farmers who she said were busy with harvest.

Courtney Campbell, chair of the philosophy department at Oregon State University, said many Muslims would be offended by how the word is used in Pyle's e-mail because it has a deep meaning in their religion.

From The Hill:

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) yesterday predicted that the Senate will not pass legislation to overhaul lobbying practices this year.

“The teasing has not started yet, but I’m sure it will,” Feingold said, only partly joking about the rough reception he anticipates from fellow senators for writing the bill. Among other things, the bill will require more disclosure of lawmakers’ meetings with lobbyists, increase the cost of traveling on private jets and ban retired senators-turned-lobbyists from the Senate floor.

Although GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s role in securing upwards of $60 million in fees from Indian tribes has made plenty of headlines this year, Feingold said he believes that lawmakers have not felt enough public backlash to make his bill a priority — at least not yet.

“Public embarrassment causes things to pass... and there is a lot out there to cause embarrassment,” he said.

What is enough embarrassment? What is it going to take, a lobbyist caught working for a shell company which is actually pushing legislation that favors China to the detriment of the United States by requiring that Southern White Men work at minimum wage building high-tech weaponry systems for China so they can sell them to North Korea? Or perhaps a lobbyist sex scandal, with the on-air talent of Desperate Housewives and Sunday Night Football and Fox's Bulls & Bears caught on video performing oral sex favors on the most senior members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs on the floor in Denny Hastert's office in a sex for votes scandal?

How much embarrassment is enough for Congress? We haven't reached it yet?