Rep. Tim Kelly withdrawn from Trump administration position over offensive blog posts

(Yfat Yossifor | MLive.com) Tim Kelly speaks during a debate with Judith Lincoln for the 94th State House Monday, Oct. 15, 2012 at Saginaw Valley State University.

State Rep. Tim Kelly has been withdrawn from consideration for a leadership post in the U.S. Department of Education for personal blog posts deemed offensive to Muslims and efforts to attract women to careers in science and engineering, Education Week is reporting.

The blog posts were made on Kelly's "Citizen Leader" blog, between 2009 and 2012, when he was serving on the Saginaw Board of Commissioners, the publication reported.

Kelly, a Republican from Saginaw Township, could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.

President Trump nominated Kelly, a longtime school choice advocate who chairs the House Education Reform Committee, to assistant secretary for career, technical and adult education.

Kelly's nomination was subject to approval by the U.S. Senate, and Education Week reported that, according to a "source," the blog posts should have been discovered during the vetting process.

According to Education Week, the decision was made after U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was made aware of the blog posts. The story also quotes a source stating, "It became clear that Mr. Kelly had made a series of statements that were not reflective of the secretary's values."

MIRS News, a capitol newsletter, reported that Kelly was in Washington this week preparing for his confirmation hearing.

In its story, Education Week published excerpts of several of Kelly's blog posts.

One, published in 2009, reportedly made offensive statements about Muslims in the wake of an incident in which a man from Nigeria attempted to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear aboard a plane headed to Detroit.

Here's the comment from his blog, according to the Education Week story:

"Forget for a moment, that this young man from Nigeria purchased his one-way ticket with cash, had no luggage, or that his father had warned the authorities of his radicalism. He should have been on anybody's no-fly list because his name is UMAR FAROUK ABDULMUTALLAB! Zenaphobic [sic]? No, I'm being pragmatic ... Instead of assuming that all people are interested in, let alone capable of, blowing up Western, Christian, or Jewish things, let's assume all Muslims are."

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