Who is Keith Ellison?

Well for starters he is a U.S. Congressman. From his website's bio page:

Originally from Detroit, Michigan, he moved to Minnesota in 1987 to attend University of Minnesota Law School, where he graduated with a Juris Doctor degree in 1990. Ellison and spouse Kim, a high school mathematics teacher, have lived on the Minneapolis Northside for the past 17 years. They have four children ages 17, 15, 10, and 9.

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Keith has a long history of community service. For eight years he hosted a public affairs program on community radio. Before entering the legislature, Keith regularly testified before state congressional committees and legislators on issues including privacy, welfare reform, indigent defense, environmental justice and others. Keith has also organized citizens to address the issue of police community relations - in fact, Keith was directly involved in the effort to establish the Minneapolis Police-Civilian Review Board in the early 1990s.

Wow, he seems like a good guy. I would vote for this guy, who cares about the "D" next to his name. Who even cares about him swearing into office using the Koran. I don't, that's what America is all about. We are the melting pot after all and I believe that is what makes this country great. But there seems to be more to this story than meets the eye. Here's what we do know:

1. At age nineteen, while attending Wayne State University in Detroit, Ellison converted from Catholicism to Islam.
2. While a law student in 1989 and 1990, Ellison wrote several columns as Keith E. Hakim in the student newspaper, the Minnesota Daily.

• The first article defended Louis Farrakhan against accusations of antisemitism
  "[61], defended Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Abdul Muhammad, and spoke in
  the voice of a Nation of Islam advocate."
• The second column "called affirmative action a 'sneaky' form of compensation for slavery, suggesting instead that white Americans pay reparations to blacks,"
• The third suggested the creation of a separate state for black residents[63][64].

In 1997, when Joanne Jackson, executive director of the Minneapolis Initiative Against Racism (MIAR), allegedly said that, "Jews are among the most racist white people", Ellison, using his religious name Mohammed, read a statement supporting her on behalf of the The Minneapolis-St. Paul Study Group of the Nations of Islam: "[We] stand by Ms. Jackson. We stand by the truth contained in the remarks attributed to her, and by her right to express her view without sanction.

Campaign finance has also been an issue for Ellison. In early 2006, the Minnesota State Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board reprimanded Ellison for unreported contributions, discrepancies in cash balances, and misclassified disbursements. These transgressions occurred in the years 2002-2004. In 2005 when the board tried to get more information about the problems in Ellison's reports, they got no response from Ellison or his treasurer (his wife Kim). When the board heard nothing, they opened the investigation. Ellison was subpoenaed and fined.The board has also fined Ellison numerous times for late filings, been sued twice by the attorney general, and has been warned many times for absent or incomplete disclosure.

Early in Ellison's campaign, his driver's license was suspended for failure to pay multiple tickets and fines. When asked how many times his license has been suspended, he said, "I don't know how many prior suspensions I've had; I don't keep count." Reports indicate that he had accumulated over forty parking and traffic tickets, and that his license was suspended twice. Ellison also failed to pay all or part of his income taxes five separate years between 1992 and 2000, forcing the state and Internal Revenue Service to put liens on his home. He later paid in excess of $18,000.


SOURCES listed here.