I thought it was outrageous when Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) started popping off about using nuclear weapons on Mecca. It was almost as bad to see Tancredo urge GOP leaders not to let Louisiana officials have any direct access to federal disaster relief dollars after Hurricane Katrina. And Tancredo showed his true colors when he actually voted against the Bush-requested aid package for the Gulf Coast.
But now, the poor man has officially become a parody of himself.
Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) requested that the Interior Department reverse plans to create a Pennsylvania 9/11 memorial in the shape of a crescent, citing the crescent’s prominent use in Islam. The architect who designed the memorial said the crescent design is meant to be a symbolic circle broken by the path of Flight 93. Nevertheless, Tancredo expressed concern that the controversial symbol might be thought to honor inadvertently the terrorists instead of the passengers who heroically stopped them.
This came from a press release issued by Tancredo’s office — not The Onion.
I’d heard that a few far-right activists were worked up about this, but for a member of Congress to wade into such bizarre nonsense might be a new low. And for Tancredo, that’s saying something.