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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Capitol Police are investigating an E-mailed threat to U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen's campaign committee, and the FBI in Memphis is aware of the threat and is taking it seriously, spokesmen for both agencies said today. Someone with a Yahoo.com address sent the message to a Cohen for Congress website saying, "If our tea parties had hoods, we would burn your ass on a cross on the White House front lawn." The reference to hoods followed a Cohen interview last week in which he described TEA Party activists using racial epithets "without robes and hoods" of the...

Congressman Steve Cohen of Memphis teed off on the Tea Party movement in a Thursday night radio interview attracting national attention. The two-term Democratic congressman said the Tea Party — "without hoods and robes" — has shown an angry, hardcore side of America that's against any type of diversity. “We saw opposition to African-Americans, hostility toward gays, hostility to anybody who wasn’t just, you know, a clone of George Wallace’s fan club,” he said on The Young Turks, an Internet and satellite radio talk show.

Via Ed Driscoll. In the congressman's own words: [video at link] Cohen represents a Black district where race baiting is a requirement: [he] introduced the resolution formally apologizing for slavery that recently passed the House, and last year tried to join the Congressional Black Caucus before being rejected on account of insufficient pigmentation. And one month later in September of 2008, Cohen would practice his own brand of racial demagoguery, comparing a certain modern day former community organizer to Jesus, and a then-governor of Alaska to Pontius Pilate. Which brings us to Cohen’s latest slur. As with small government Tea...

Of all the incendiary smears of tea partiers over the last few weeks, this one’s my very favorite. Not only is it relentlessly nasty, especially for a congressman — note the cute little joke he makes near the end referencing McCain’s torture in Hanoi — but it’s part of a critique of, ahem, right-wing vitriol. Come for the finger-wagging about civility, stay for the George Wallace and Kristallnacht analogies. Then again, that’s par for the course. As Ed Driscoll reminds me, what makes this clip extra special is the fact that Steve Cohen himself was compared to a Klansman and...

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) uses John Murtha's death to push health care.

The man who brought down Galleon is not finished, and if the report by Reuters' Matt Goldstein is correct, FBI special agent B.J. Kang may well have his sights set on the top of the hedge fund pantheon: SAC Capital itself. This is not a surprise to Zero Hedge, and is something we have speculated on in the past, however the intricacies of such a spectacular take down would have to be refined beyond any reasonable doubt as any allegations against Mr. Cohen will likely see the involvement of every single $1,000/hour billing lawyer in the world, taking on any...

MEMPHIS — A Congressional race in Tennessee has become freighted with racial overtones almost a year before the election, with a prominent black politician saying the white incumbent cannot properly represent black voters. The black candidate, former Mayor Willie W. Herenton of Memphis, has argued that Tennessee needs a black voice in its currently all-white delegation. He is running a blistering campaign against Representative Steve Cohen, a fellow Democrat with a precarious hold on the majority black district. “To know Steve Cohen is to know that he really does not think very much of African-Americans,” Mr. Herenton said in a...

While first-term U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen was on the floor of the House on Tuesday, guiding passage of a historic resolution apologizing to African-American citizens for slavery and Jim Crow laws, his most prominent and well-funded Democratic primary opponent was out in the Memphis heat trying to win voters. Nikki Tinker likes to wear a baseball cap and athletic shoes to go with a skirt, giving her the look of a woman hard at work, and she would often show voters the tan line on her arms as evidence of it. She said she worked outside at the early-voting sites...

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The man accused of fatally shooting a soldier outside a recruiting center begged for FBI agents to free him from a Yemeni jail where he was "radicalized" by Islamic terrorists, his lawyer told The Associated Press on Thursday. Lawyer Jim Hensley described Abdulhakim Muhammad as an impressionable youth driven to public service in an impoverished Middle Eastern country. But teachings by "hardened" terrorists in Yemen and experiences with Afghan child refugees who were missing limbs drove him to become someone his parents didn't recognize, Hensley said. "Here comes the FBI, who may be able...

Redstate.com reports that Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) had this to say in the House of Representatives. I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, um, that the parties have differences, but if you want Change, but if you want change, you want the Democratic party, uh, Barack Obama was a community organizer like Jesus who our, uh, minister prayed about, uh, Pontius Pilate was a governor. Perhaps Rep. Cohen believes that Obama is the Jewish Messiah (whom Christians would probably call the Second Coming of Jesus). After all, the National "Jewish" Democratic Council proclaims with a straight face that the Messiah is...

A racially charged Democratic primary campaign ended Thursday with an incumbent congressman trouncing the opponent who ran an ad linking him to the Ku Klux Klan. Early, unofficial results showed Democrat Steve Cohen with 79 percent of the vote to 19 percent for Nikki Tinker, a black corporate lawyer who was his chief opponent in the district that covers Memphis.

The staff of Congressman Steve Cohen called police to his home today after an argument with an Armenian-American activist in town from California ended with Cohen physically pushing him out the side door. Peter Musurlian, a documentary producer for Globalist Films in Glendale, Calif., followed a reporter from The Commercial Appeal into Cohen’s Overton Park home, where the Congressman had invited local media to respond to a commercial from Nikki Tinker, his 9th Congressional District opponent in Thursday’s Democratic Primary, that Cohen called “more mudslinging.” When members of Cohen’s staff realized who the cameraman was – Cohen said Musurlian followed...

Tempers flared and emotions erupted Tuesday at a meeting between U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen and a group of black ministers, stemming from the freshman congressman's support for a federal hate crimes bill. More than 100 ministers and guests showed up Tuesday for the weekly meeting of the Memphis Baptist Ministerial Association, where Cohen had been invited to speak. During a volatile question-and-answer forum that followed, many loudly commented that Cohen, who is white, can't adequately represent the primarily black Ninth District. "He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line," said Rev. Robert Poindexter of Mt....

During her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee testimony Dem congressman Steven Cohen of Tennessee quizzed former Justice Department official Monica Goodling regarding her Christian faith and the Christian law school at Regent University, founded by Pat Robertson, that she attended. An internet search reveals brief references to the interrogation in articles by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post and Maura Reynolds in the Los Angeles Times. But I saw no coverage of the grilling on any of the morning news shows, nor have CNN or MSNBC picked it up as far as I have noticed. I'm setting forth...

Democratic congressional candidate Steve Cohen said Friday that Harold Ford Sr.'s work for his son Jake's campaign against Cohen is hurting Harold Ford Jr.'s bid for the U.S. Senate. Cohen said Jake Ford's independent candidacy for the 9th Congressional District seat is "overreaching." He said he suspects that Ford Sr.'s heavy involvement in Jake's campaign, Ford Jr.'s failure to endorse Cohen as the Democratic nominee, and remarks Ford Sr. has made about Cohen will cost Junior votes in his Senate race. The comments prompted a strong written statement from Ford Jr.'s campaign. It read, in part: "Now, it appears that...

COMMANDER IN CHIEF Many listeners have phoned the show to ask me if the new television show which features Geena Davis playing the role of a female president is an overt attempt to promote the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Up until now I've said that while the show will certainly help the American people accept the idea of a female president, I didn't really think that was the design or intention. Well ... now we have more information. Now we learn that the creator of the program has said that he will take credit by claiming that the show helped...