Seems in our haste to get our britches in a bunch over the first Muslim in Congress, we forgot to ask whether or not he was nut.

Addressing a gathering of atheists in his home state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, compared the 9/11 atrocities to the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1933. This was probably burned down by the Nazis in order to justify Hitler’s later seizure of emergency powers.

“It’s almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that,” Mr Ellison said. “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.”

To applause from his audience of 300 members of Atheists for Human Rights, Mr Ellison said he would not accuse the Bush administration of planning 9/11 because “you know, that’s how they put you in the nut-ball box – dismiss you”.

See, here’s the thing. Jerks like Ellison are poisoning the well for everyone. Now if I say that I think the Bush Administration used 9/11 to empower themselves, I’m in that nutbag group. It provides the Right an easy response: “So you think Bush is Hitler? You think 9/11 was the Reichstag?”

Memo to the left: cut it out. As Jon Stewart said, the comparisons to Hitler are demeaning to Hitler – he worked too hard being a psychotic murdering monster to be used as the comparison for every Tom, Dick and Harriet Myers that comes down the pipe. What are we going to compare someone to when he’s a real Hitler? For Chrissake, we have genocides going on in Darfur and Congo. What do we say about them?

And try to learn something of history beyond World War II movies. For example, read about the Zimmerman Telegram, which would make an excellent discussion point for Iraq.