Stand strong.

(WaPo) — The shooting in Tucson offers Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) an opportunity to rethink his planned Homeland Security Committeehearings on Muslim “radicalization” in this country.

King says he’s worried about the “disconnect,” as he calls it, “between outstanding Muslims who contribute so much to the future of our country and those leaders who — for whatever reason — acquiesce in terror or ignore the threat.”

By that standard, he should have hearings on the failure of Republican leaders to denounce Sarah Palin’s “crosshairs” Web page and Sharron Angle’s invocation of “Second Amendment remedies” to Big Government and her opponent in the Nevada U.S. Senate race, Harry Reid.

Of course, that is no business for the Homeland Security Committee. Imagine the response if King’s Democratic predecessor, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, had tried to summon Palin and Angle, not to mention Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, to testify at such hearings.

King’s announcement of hearings last month proved incendiary, with law-abiding U.S. Islamic groups and such prominent individuals as Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim elected to Congress, protesting that such an attention-getting forum will only further “vilify” them.