Rep. Keith Ellison has certainly crossed a line with this one.

America's first Muslim congressman has provoked outrage by apparently comparing President George W Bush to Adolf Hitler and hinting that he might have been responsible for the September 11 attacks.

Addressing a gathering of atheists in his home state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, compared the 9/11 atrocities to the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1933. This was probably burned down by the Nazis in order to justify Hitler's later seizure of emergency powers.

"It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that," Mr Ellison said. "After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted."

To applause from his audience of 300 members of Atheists for Human Rights, Mr Ellison said he would not accuse the Bush administration of planning 9/11 because "you know, that's how they put you in the nut-ball box - dismiss you".

Excuse me, Keith, but your fellow Muslim, Osama bin Laden, admits that he and his people were behind 9/11. That means that, in fact, MUSLIMS WERE TO BLAME FOR 9/11.

And since you want to make comparisons to Hitler, I'd like to note that this Administration has made extreme efforts to be conciliatory towards Muslims, and to discourage anti-Muslim bias.

On the other hand, Much of the Islamic world revels in anti-Semitism, and rhetoric about killing Jews is considered mainstream. That sounds a whole lot more like Hitler than anything coming from the bush Administration. But then again, given the Muslim support for Hitler that was seen during WWII, we shouldn't be surprised that the Muslim world still echoes with that same foul ideology today. For that matter, given Ellison's history of associating with anti-Semitic organizations, I think that his comparing anyone to Hitler is more a case of projection than anything else.