As I discussed on the show on Saturday, I believe in innocence until proven guilt, even in cases of domestic abuse.   We don’t, as the hysterical left is wont to say, “Believe Accusers” because of some a priori  conflation of assumed victimhood and virtue.

We take accusers seriously.  And that means accusers of either gender.   Women are thumpers, too.   Take them seriously, and find out the truth.

So in the wake of the DFL Politburo Central Committee voting 82-18% to go ahead with endorsing Ellison, I won’t be joining the horde demanding he step down from the race over the domestic abuse allegations.  There’s juuuuuust enough missing from Karen Monahan’s story to make me want to get the actual facts – preferably, to see (or have lawyers and prosecutors see) Monahan’s elusive video.

Maybe it’ll be enough to convince voters that he’s not a great fit to be the state’s top law-enforcement officer.

And I don’t care.  Because for a rational person, there are plenty of other excellent reasons not to allow him within a mile of the Attorney General’s office.

Gonna Dust Some Cops Off

Ellison’s history of cuddling up to cop-killers – without a lot in the way of nuance or question – should give one pause:

In September 1992 Minneapolis police officer Jerry Haaf was murdered execution-style, shot in the back as he took a coffee break at a restaurant in south Minneapolis. Police later determined that Haaf’s murder was a gang hit performed by four members of the city’s Vice Lords gang.The leader of the Vice Lords was Sharif Willis, a convicted murderer who had been released from prison and who sought respectability as a responsible gang leader from gullible municipal authorities while operating a gang front called United for Peace.

The four Vice Lords members who murdered Haaf met and planned the murder at Willis’s house. Despite the fact that two witnesses implicated Willis in the planning he was never charged because law enforcement authorities said they lacked sufficient evidence to convict him.

At the time, Ellison was a Minneapolis attorney in private practice. And within a month of Haaf’s murder, Ellison appeared with Willis supporting the United for Peace gang front. In October 1992, Ellison helped organize a demonstration against Minneapolis police that included United for Peace. “The main point of our rally is to support United for Peace [in its fight against] the campaign of slander the police federation has been waging,” said Ellison.

Read the whole thing.  Goodness knows the local media won’t be running anything of the sort.

Ellison The Ideologue

Even before he became the Deputy Chair of the DNC and one of the de facto leaders of the most “progressive” wing of the Democrat conference in DC, Ellison was a noted extremist.

No – I mean extremist:

While speaking to an atheist group in 2007, Ellison compared the Sept. 11 attacks to the Reichstag fire. He stopped just short of accusing then-President George W. Bush of having a hand in the attacks. “It’s almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that,” Ellison said of the terrorist attacks. “After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.”

Ellison went on to say he wouldn’t suggest the U.S. had a hand in the attacks because “you know, that’s how they put you in the nut-ball box — dismiss you,” before later walking back the comments.

About Those Jews

It was probably ten years ago, appearing on a podcast run by a local center-left pundit, that I got my only chance to actually talk with Ellison.

I got one question out:   “Do you renounce the Hamas charter?”

I was referring, of course, to the parts that call for the eradication of Israel, and the extinction of the Jewish people.

Ellison’s response:  “Do you know any Arabs?”

Not sure if he was expecting me to respond “Some of my best friends are Arabs” or what – but the rest of his answer was peevish deflective baked wind, intending to turn a simple question into an ad hominem against me – for trying to get a straight answer about a record that could be charitably called corrosively antisemitic.   And has been.

Domestic abuse is the least of the questions Ellison should be impelled to answer.

So will anyone in the Twin Cities media bother asking?