politically savvy.......

ok, so this from npr on my way home from Frankfort....... Newly elected Rep. Keith Ellison announced last month that he planned to take the oath of office with his hand on the Quran. The decision by the Minnesota Democrat, the first Muslim elected to Congress, drew criticism.

But now Ellison says he plans to use a copy of the Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson. Michele Norris talks with Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, who helped Ellison locate Jefferson's Quran........

During the broadcast of this story, the interviewer and the fellow from the Library of Congress discussed how Jefferson probably came to own this book...it was printed while Jefferson was studying law, and he wrote in many of his personal correspondences that the Quran was an alternative structure for many useful laws.....I consider Ellison's decision to use this particular version of the book he holds most dear to be nothing less than genious......and a strong message to those who claim to believe in freedom of religion.....this basic tenet means that we all have the freedom to be other than Christian if we so choose and feel strongly.......just like the Christians have the right not to be Muslims or Jews or Atheists.....regardless of the political party in power.....