Jim Durbin Accuses Cleaver of "Lying," Calls him a "Hustler"

Jim Durbin at 24thstate today accused Representative Emmanual Cleaver of "lying" and called him a "no-good, race-baiting hustler" after Cleaver told reporters that he was called racial slurs while walking through a Washington, D.C. Tea Party crowd. Durbin said that this was all a part of a scheme by Democrats to "change the subject."

Unmentioned by Durbin is the fact that if Cleaver was lying, then so were Representatives Andre Carson, James Clyburn, and John Lewis, as well as CNN reporter Dana Bash.

I personally don't know much about Cleaver's history, but I know a little about Representative Lewis. The former head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a crucial figure in the civil rights movement, John Lewis was spit on, hit, and screamed at while sitting at segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee. He participated in the Freedom Rides, riding on previously segregated Greyhound buses into the South. A bus he was on was stopped by an angry white mob; and Lewis was dragged out of the bus and beaten. The idea that this man would throw out a fake claim of being called a racial slur is ridiculous.

The last few days have revealed the truly ugly side of the St. Louis Tea Party, and Durbin's (as well as Gateway Pundit, Dana Loesch, and POED Patriot's) attack on civil rights leaders is among the ugliest.