The New York Times had a very informative article on Peter King's long sympathy and alleged collaboration with the Irish terrorist group IRA. The point here is not to waste time comparing whether the IRA and Al Qaeda are equally morally reprehensible (to me they both are), but that King, who apparently struggled with ancestral ties to a foreign land, believes he's well positioned to lead these hearings. The IRA, he says, never targeted Americans. True, but what Mr. King is implying is that terrorism can be tolerated and even supported if it does not affect the United States and American civilians. I wonder if his unconditional love for Ireland could have wavered had the IRA's victims included Americans. Would Mr. King then agree to a hearing of all Irish Americans to ascertain their loyalty to America? Apparently, Mr. King also wrote thinly-veiled novels about terrorism and in his 2004 novel Vale of Tears, the hero is a congressman who works hard to foil an impending attack in New York City by Al Qaeda. The congressman in the novel receives death threats from Al Qaeda operatives and the fate of the city is in his hands. There almost doesn't seem to be any difference between the James Bond congressman in the novel (the comparison is in the novel) and Mr. King. I just hope that there won't be any confusion between fiction and reality in the hearings. Come on, this is already a spectacle and the hearings have not begun yet. It will be personal and muddy as we have seen already at a time when we need to let go of imaginary fences. This will only aggravate the differences. Debates are good; hearings can be notoriously suspicious when they set people off on the defensive before they even start.

Let's be real, this is a calculated but desperate political scheme to regain the support of voters, because in some circles, those who defend America just cannot possibly be wrong. Let law enforcement authorities do their job away from the fanfare of media spectacles.