I'm not sure I adequately got across my point in this morning's post about conservatives accusing the Obama administration of scuttling a prosecution of CAIR. Not only is the accusation itself pure speculation, but the idea that the Obama administration is somehow taking it easy on Muslims is largely a function of conservative focus on rhetoric. The Obama administration has kept the FBI's Bush-era guidelines on investigation, which critics say amount to racial profiling. It hasn't been shy about using stings or informants to produce terrorism cases, even to the point of constructing false terrorist plots to nab wannabes.
Conservatives, including Peter King, have largely interpreted the administration's inclusive rhetoric to mean the administration doesn't take terrorism seriously. You can see this reflected in the idea that Obama was worried about upsetting "interfaith partners" by prosecuting CAIR. Prior to his hearings, King was literally demanding Obama say the word "terrorism" more often, as though that would solve the problem.
This isn't particularly difficult to understand. The administration has made a strategic decision to avoid using language that might legitimize the moral claims of Islamic extremists. The decision to take a particular approach when talking about terrorism has no bearing on the policies it pursues in practice, and indeed may be meant to provide cover for how aggressive those policies actually are. But on the right, criticism of the former often doubles as criticism of the latter.
Now, I'm not really sure what went into the decision not to prosecute, but the basic framework of accusations here are almost identical to those of the New Black Panther case: The administration is micromanaging prosecutions to avoid implicating its "political allies," who in reality are people of negligible political influence, or because they have an ideological bias against doing prosecuting said group. CAIR is more mainstream than the NBPP, but they've been politically radioactive for a long time and cut ties with them long ago.
Of course, all the accusations in the NBPP case turned out to be groundless. Outside of the conservative imagination, where Obama actively sympathizes with terrorists and extremists, what reason does the administration have to let people they know to be actively endangering the country go unprosecuted?
