Here’s a web site whose time has come: CAIR Watch, whose motto is “Keeping an eye on hate.”

There’s a lot to watch, as the Council on American Islamic Relations gets more and more active in the US, and mainstream media refuses to deal with their many well-documented ties to extremists and convicted terrorists.

Here’s the latest example of that refusal, in an LA Times article about an Islamic candidate for Anaheim’s City Council, portraying CAIR as a “mainstream civil rights organization,” and the whistleblowers as “Islamophobic” kooks: GOP Leader Says Anaheim Council Candidate Backs Extremist Groups.

The accusations against Bill Dalati, an insurance agent who was born in Syria and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1987, surfaced last week in a letter from former state Republican Party chairman Shawn Steel and on various websites. On the OC Blog, a politically conservative website, the headline atop the letter opposing Dalati’s candidacy read “Something Scary in Anaheim.”

Steel, the state GOP leader from 2001 to 2003, said he wrote the letter to alert fellow conservatives that Dalati — a moderate Republican — could be a “Manchurian candidate.”

“He looks good on the outside, but the guy could be an extremist,” Steel said Friday. “Is his primary concern to fix the potholes and improve the city, or does he really have an agenda here to support extremist organizations and cloak them with respectability?”

In the letter, Steel questioned Dalati’s connections to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, later calling CAIR a “pretty radical, nasty group.” He also cited Dalati’s involvement with an Anaheim rally protesting the Israel-Lebanon conflict, and his endorsement of Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney of Georgia, a Democrat.

Dalati, who came to the U.S. in 1984 and has been an Anaheim resident for 12 years, said he was frustrated and angered by the letter. “I need to be out on the campaign trail, not worrying about all this negative stereotyping,” Dalati said. “People should look at the issues, not where I came from. Everybody came from somewhere. It’s clear that my faith and my heritage are the reason they don’t want me around.”

Dalati, a 41-year-old Muslim, doesn’t deny that he supports CAIR, the largest Muslim civil rights group in the country and largely viewed as a mainstream organization. Local Republican law enforcement officials such as Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona and Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca have attended the local chapter’s fundraisers.

UPDATE at 10/9/06 12:54:06 pm:

Here’s another example of MSM whitewashing, in a New York Times article about Islamic candidate for Congress Keith Ellison that makes no mention of Ellison’s ties to CAIR—even though his opponent Alan Fine has made it a campaign issue: Democrat Poised to Become First Muslim in Congress.