The Nut Gallery

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They tried, "He's in over his head." That didn't work. They tried,"He'll sell pot to your kids." That went up in smoke. Now they're floating the message that Justin Trudeau "consorts with religious extremists." According to the Huffington Post:

Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino, who recently circulated flyers making questionable claims about Trudeau's position on pot legalization, took to Twitter Wednesday to launch a different kind of attack on the Liberal leader.

Fantino's jab about religious extremists is likely related to a story from Sun News that the Liberal leader visited the al-Sunnah al-Nabawiah mosque in his Quebec riding. According to the network, "American government sources" say the mosque "has been an al-Qaeda recruitment centre."

In what was obviously a coordinated attack, Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney chimed in:

Steven Blaney also took to social media on Wednesday and, in posts that were retweeted by the official Conservative Party account, criticized Trudeau for associating with a group that allegedly "radicalizes" Canadians.

Even National Post columnist Jonathan Kay is having a hard time buying this barrage. Sun News, he writes, has gone over the line:

But am I the only observer who is unsettled by Sun News’ casual suggestion that visiting congregants at a mosque is morally akin to visiting convicted criminals in a prison? Or the network’s strategy of scaremongering confused viewers about the number of Muslims in this country? Or libelling a Trudeau advisor as some sort of al-Qaeda cheerleader because his geopolitical views happen to lie to the left of John Baird and Stephen Harper?

Fantino and Blaney have happily joined Sun in crossing that line, forgetting that:

Justin Trudeau’s riding of Papineau is one of the poorest and most diverse in Canada. It is full of immigrants who are wrestling with the process of integrating into Canadian life. What sort of MP would we want for such a riding — one who brags to Sun News viewers about how he wouldn’t set foot within 50 feet of this or that house of prayer, lest he be tainted by association with the teeming Muslim hordes who pray therein … or someone who actually seeks to engage with these people and draw them into the political mainstream?

Fantino, Blaney and Sun -- the government's unofficial  mouthpiece -- have confirmed once again that the Harper government truly deserves the sobriquet, "The Nut Gallery."