State representative Rick Womick (R-TN) has made no secret of his anti-Muslim views. A New York Times article from July described Womick on the statehouse floor, warning his constuents that Islamic law was the most urgent threat to their way of life. But in an interview on the sidelines of the “Preserving Freedom Conference” at the Cornerstone Church in Madison, TN, Womick went to new extremes to paint Muslim Americans as dangerous and seditious.

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The trial over the site plan approval for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro has been scheduled for next April. Seventeen plaintiffs are suing Rutherford County, claiming officials violated Tennessee’s open meetings law.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Joe Brandon Jr. also tried to argue that the mosque violated his clients’ constitutional rights, claiming mosque members were compelled by their religion to subdue non-Muslims. Chancellor Robert Corlew dismissed that claim in May.

Rutherford County attorney Josh McCreary said that Corlew set an April 25 trial date during a hearing on Wednesday. Corlew also agreed to allow The Murfreesboro Post to intervene in the case.

Notice for the meeting where the site plan was approved was printed in The Post. Plaintiffs argue The Post is not a newspaper of general circulation, as required by law.

Associated Press, 2 November 2011

TPM reports on Pamela Geller’s endorsement of would-be Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. The kiss of death to Cain’s campaign, surely?

A Republican candidate for Hillsborough Clerk of Circuit Court on Monday fired off a letter saying Islam is “not a religion” but a theocracy that is “totalitarian and littered with human rights violations.”

Scott D. Barrish, a 35-year-old private security officer who previously ran unsuccessfully for the Hillsborough School Board, sent the letter to the Council of American-Islamic Relations. He signed it as a member of the Hillsborough County Republican Party’s executive committee. “Your efforts in espousing Islam in America and Florida will not succeed,” Barrish wrote. “This is us vs. you. In the great words of the late President Ronald Reagan, ‘I win, you lose!'”

Barrish said in an interview that he sent the e-mail letter because the group had engaged in what he called publicity stunts. CAIR, for instance, thanked Gov. Rick Scott and Sen. Marco Rubio for declining to speak at the upcoming Florida tea party convention because it featured a presentation by an “anti-Islam extremist.”

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Representatives from the offices of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Gov. Rick Scott report that neither will be attending the Florida Tea Party Convention scheduled for this weekend, despite their inclusion on the event’s agenda.

Both are included as speakers on the current convention agenda, along with a slew of right-wing activists and speakers.

Alex Burgos, Rubio’s communications director, tells The Florida Independent that the senator will not be attending the convention in Daytona Beach. Scott’s scheduling office also says that “at this time” the event is not on the governor’s “official schedule”. “Things could change,” a representative says.

The event will feature speakers such as former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed, anti-Islam blogger Pam Geller and G. Edward Griffin. Griffin is an anti-Federal Reserve, anti-United Nations and anti-communist conspiracy theorist who describes himself as a “life member” of the John Birch Society – a historically infamous anti-communist group.

Geller is best known for her blog Atlas Shrugs, which has been described by The New York Times as a “site that attacks Islam with a rhetoric venomous enough that PayPal at one point branded it a hate site.” The attendance of Geller, and other anti-Islam activists, caught the attention of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-FL).

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