Tolerance and the Ground Zero Mosque
by Joseph C. Phillips

I am fascinated that the same people who have been able to find a Constitutional right to government control of education, healthcare, and the energy industry are unable to divine from that same document any rational basis for the government to prevent a mosque from being built on Ground Zero.

Of course, the issue is not whether the American Society for Muslim Advancement has a constitutional right to build a 13-story, mosque, and community center within 600 feet of Ground Zero. There are a number of things citizens have a right to do—things that the constitutional protection of speech protects—that people of good conscience choose not to do and that others might view as offensive or insulting.

It is important to point out that there have been no pronouncements from opponents of the mosque that the American Society for Muslim Advancement does not have a right to build the mosque wherever they wish. Opponents have simply asked that the building not be built in that location. What remains unclear and unanswered is why the supporters of this mosque are choosing to move forward in spite of its offense and emotional injury to others.

Spokesman and chief fundraiser for the mosque, imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, maintains that the project is about “promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture.” The complex “will provide a place where individuals, regardless of their backgrounds, will find a center of learning, art, and culture; and most importantly, a center guided by Islamic values in their truest form—compassion, generosity, and respect for all.”

Tolerance, compassion, and a respect for the feelings of others might lead the builders of the mosque to issue a statement, saying something along the lines of: “While we strongly disagree with the sentiments of those opposed to the location of this center, we understand and are sympathetic to the deep emotions fueling those sentiments. Moreover, we are respectful of those feelings and, so, in the name of love, we are going to move our mosque a few blocks up the street. It is our sincere hope that this gesture will be the beginning of a healing process that will put us all on the path to a victory of our common humanity over the ideals that fueled the horrible events of 9/11/01. We are dedicated to making this center a beacon of hope, learning, and compassion not only for the city of New York, but for the entire nation.”

Alas, there have been no statements approaching that kind of generous tone. Instead, what opponents have heard are accusations of bigotry and ignorance, lectures on American values, and a conviction that the medicine of this insult is good for America no matter how bitter it tastes.

So much for tolerance, compassion, and community cohesion.

What could possibly account for the disconnect between the elites and the seventy percent of Americans who oppose the building of the mosque at Ground Zero?

There is a small segment of the left that simply hates America. There is no other way to describe it. These hard-core leftists do not respect America’s traditions or institutions, so they are comrades-in-arms with any force that seeks to undermine or insult those institutions and they rush to stand in opposition to anything that smacks of patriotism or national pride.

A much larger segment of the political left has chosen to wrap its patriotism in the brown-paper wrap of multi-culturalism. For these soft leftists, America’s great strength is its diversity, (as opposed to the founding belief in certain objective truths to which all men must be bound). For them, American values must be malleable enough to fit into the larger context of world citizenry. Thus, everything is American! And yet, in truth, nothing is American because America is so many different things and all of them of equal value, none more sacred than any of the others!

The over-riding motivator, however, is guilt. Leftist—both hard and soft—are still seeking to atone for the sins of our nation’s past. They are hesitant to stand in defense of Western civilization and American ideals and culture lest they be seen as defending whiteness, and by extension, to be standing in opposition to non-whiteness. It is only through national humility and apologetic, cultural indulgence that we can absolve ourselves of the nation’s original sin and win the hearts of our enemies.

Most Americans, however, seem to understand that we are engaged in a battle for the soul of America. No amount of genuflection toward our enemies will make us safer. And each accommodation we make in the name of political correctness brings us one step closer to ruin. It is both fascinating and infuriating that the mosque’s supporters do not understand this simple truth. Or perhaps they do understand it, but simply choose to ignore it.

911 words about Obama’s Mosque
by Kevin McCollough

It was something he certainly didn’t have to do. But he did it anyway. President Obama stepped into the fray of the single most divisive issue pertaining to terrorism, healing of hurt, religious disagreement, civil liberties, political fracturing, racism, and national security all in one step.

How’s that for bringing us all together?

Why a sitting President feels compelled to sit down to a formal Muslim dinner in the first place begs the issue of necessity. After all, why not send them a nice little video-taped greeting like you did the Boy Scouts of America? I mean it’s not like it was the 100th Anniversary of Iftar.

No, instead President Obama felt compelled, not just attend, but to host the little soiree and then make formal comments addressing the gathering.

Something along the lines of:

“But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.”

Question, Mr. President, “Do you feel that all Muslims have a right to exercise their religion?”

How about the nearly 2 million of them world-wide that buy into the exact same brand of Islam that the killers of 9/11 practiced? Do you feel that they have the right to practice that brand of Islam in the United States? How about on the sacred ground of Ground Zero?

Even the “moderate” practitioners of that faith seem to be having some real trouble coming to clarity on not encouraging their fellow Islamists to be so very insensitive.

To date all of two prominent moderate Muslims have had the courage, and endured the death threats, to suggest the Mosque be built somewhere else.

But you Mr. President, we expected better of you, and Mr. Bloomberg, and Mr. Paterson for that matter. We expected those of you who work for “We The People” to have some sort of understanding of propriety, decency, and honor. At the very least we did, and still do expect you to at least demonstrate some modicum of competence: like pushing the pause button until we know who is funding the Mosque, and where the money originates from.

Also checking into the known links between the front man for the effort and terrorist groups wouldn’t hurt either.

What we especially don’t need and wish you wouldn’t waste our time on is empty, meaningless, public statements. Are you genuinely so bored in office that you’ve run out of things to comment on? “How ’bout I give you a topic?”

“Extension of the Bush tax cuts for small businesses so that we can finally start doing something about the unemployment in the nation… discuss…”

The truth is the Obama Mosque in New York City is in large measure being favored and given preferential treatment to other communities of faith. How else can you explain why a small Greek Orthodox church congregation in the same neighborhood–which existed prior to 9.11–still doesn’t have clearance or permission to reestablish it’s presence in lower Manhattan?

Americans aren’t unreasonable Mr. President. If we could be really sure, because some investigative body did its job thoroughly, that the kind of Islam being taught in this particular Mosque wouldn’t be the same kind of Islam that is taught in radical Mosques all over the world, then we’d find it somewhat easier to be soothed by your forked tongue.

The problem here is, no one’s even claiming to have a desire to look into it.

In Islam there is a long standing practice of building a Mosque, a temple, a shrine to Allah’s glory upon conquered lands. I know that you and the rest of the “professional left” find it inconceivable that Muslims would dare to think that about America. But you’ve given them no reason to think otherwise.

You let your Attorney General spit in the face of 9.11 families by attempting to bring the animals currently housed in Gitmo back to my precious city to make some grand gesture. But the Jihadists didn’t see it that way. They laughed at you for your foolishness.

In fact since you’ve been in office you’ve repeatedly apologized to the Islamic world for America’s action of liberation to fifty million muslims, you wholly redirected our space program to the unique purpose of making them feel good about how smart Muslims used to be, and on issue after issue you’ve sided with the views of the terrorists, even appointing several of the former defenders of the Gitmo detainees to your Department of Justice.

But this last week, even though no one was asking you to, you stepped into the most painful issue related to the hallowed grounds of 9.11 to date.

You chose sides, even when nobody cared if you did.

But now it’s in your file. We will discuss during your performance review in November and over the next two years.

And now you own it!

The Obama Mosque of Lower Manhattan… Hmm…

It does have a ring to it.

The Adolescent Angst of Barack Obama
by Michael Barone

There is a tendency for newly installed presidents, like adolescents suddenly liberated from adult supervision, to do the exact opposite of what their predecessors did. Presidents of both parties indulge in this behavior, though Democrats who campaign as candidates of hope and change are more likely to do so.

Some of this is a legitimate response to the political process: Voters tend to elect presidents who seem to possess qualities and views they thought lacking in their predecessors. But some of it, and especially in the case of Barack Obama, seems to come from an adolescent-like confidence that everything done by those who came before is (insert your own generation’s expletive here).

We have seen this spectacularly in the dozen days since the June 12 Iranian election. Back in July 2007, Obama said that he would meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other tyrants without preconditions. Grownup squares like George W. Bush wouldn’t talk to these guys, so as the avatar of the generation of hope and change, Obama would. Obama figured he was cool enough to get the mullahs to agree to renounce nuclear weapons and all that hate stuff.

Obama has held to this ever since. Before June 12, he said he would give the Iranian leaders till the end of the year to be enchanted. When millions of Iranians started demonstrating in the streets, denouncing the obvious election fraud and in some cases calling for an end to the regime, his initial responses verged on stony indifference.

He expressed “deep concern” but said he didn’t want to “meddle.” He issued a statement on June 20 calling on the Iranian government “to stop all violent and unjust actions.” Finally, in a hastily called news conference Tuesday, he for the first time uttered the verb “condemn” and said he was moved by the video of YouTube martyr Neda Soltan being shot down by the mullahs’ gunmen.

But he clearly hasn’t abandoned his policy of seeking the good opinion of tyrants. He didn’t even rescind the State Department’s invitations of Iranian diplomats to attend U.S. embassy Fourth of July celebrations (halal hot dogs, anyone?). If Bush refused to entertain the emissaries of the Iranian theocrats, it must be right to do the opposite. But even anonymous State Department officials are saying that the chances are dismal for fruitful negotiations with Ahmadinejad or the tyrant Obama insists on calling “the Supreme Leader” by Obama’s deadline — something that seemed obvious to me and many others well before June 12.

A regime of tyrants dedicated to hatred of America, Britain and Israel is not going to be persuaded to abandon a central goal by even the most dazzling display of adolescent charm.

The other example of adolescent rejection of a policy has come on missile defense. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Democratic politicians opposed missile defense on the grounds — mistaken in my view, but arguable at the time — that it would destabilize the balance of nuclear terror between the United States and the Soviet Union. Democrats have clung to that position even after the fall of the Soviet Union, and Obama, as a senator and presidential candidate, joined them, routinely expressing doubts that missile defense could ever work.

As president, he has singled out missile defense for cuts, even in the face of missile launches by North Korea and evidence of continuing missile development by Iran. Bush abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and pushed ahead on missile defense, so it must be bad even if there’s no U.S.-Soviet balance of terror to destabilize anymore.

Fortunately, there has been some adult supervision: Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in anticipation of a North Korean launch, has activated missile defense operations in Hawaii.

Obama has not taken an adolescent approach across the board. Despite the yearning of many Democrats for American defeat in Iraq and withdrawal from Afghanistan, he has pushed for something like victory in those theaters.

But he is persistent in seeking negotiations with the mullahs and obviously disinclined to increase the small chance of the far more promising outcome of regime change. Plus, Obama shows a continued distaste for missile defense when tyrants are aiming missiles at us and our friends.

These moves show an adolescent determination to renounce the policies of those who came before, no matter what. As parents know, it takes time for an adolescent to grow up.

Another day, another off-teleprompter gaffe!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RyESrsd6CI

All the President’s Tax Cheats
by Michelle Malkin

You never get a second chance to make a first post-inaugural impression. Less than three weeks into his first 100 days, Barack Obama has left an indelible mark on his nascent presidency: the mark of incompetence and hubris. Despite the administration’s much-touted wealth of bright minds and high bars, the transition has been a complete disaster.

In a double whammy on Tuesday, tax troubles and ethical clouds forced the withdrawal of not one but two high-profile Obama nominees. These come on the heels of former Commerce Secretary-nominee Bill Richardson’s withdrawal due to a pay-for-play probe in New Mexico and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s “tax goofs” involving his failure to pay $43,000 in federal self-employment taxes for four separate years — until, that is, he was nominated for the Treasury post. Thorough vetting, it seems, is an inconvenient process — a pesky “distraction,” if you will — in the Land of Hope and Change.

Health and Human Services Secretary-designee Tom Daschle finally bowed out after aggressive rehabilitative efforts failed. His chummy Senate pals on both sides of the aisle may have been willing to forgive his failure to pay longstanding back taxes owed on limo services, undisclosed consulting fees and dubious charitable donations worth an estimated $146,000, including interest and penalties. But the American people were not. (And an interesting postscript: He may have apologized and dropped out of the administration, but Daschle still owes Medicare taxes equal to 2.9 percent of the personal value of the car service he received from Democratic donor and crony Leo Hindery Jr.)

Just before the Daschle announcement came the withdrawal of Nancy Killefer. She was tapped to be President Obama’s “Chief Performance Officer,” overseeing compliance, organizational effectiveness and waste management across every federal agency. But the former Clinton Treasury official and head of the prestigious Washington office of the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, Inc., couldn’t be bothered to manage her own household help effectively. She failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes and had an outstanding tax lien on her home. The lien was worth less than $1,000 — far less than the tax liability Geithner owed.

If I were a left-wing feminist, I’d be sorely tempted to whip out the gender card and give the Good Old Boys Club a few whacks. Killefer gets thrown under the bus, but Geithner gets to drive? No justice, no peace!

Now, compare President Bush’s transition track record in 2001. Remember that the traditional 100-day period was shortened as a result of the election lawsuit. Wrote Paul Light of the left-leaning Brookings Institution at the time: “Bush gets an A on the transition into office. He survived his truncated 40-day transition with only one major mistake — Linda Chavez, who withdrew her nomination for Labor Secretary after the flap over allowing an illegal immigrant to stay in her house. … Bush also deserves an A-plus for the timely assembly of his White House team. Building around Vice President Dick Cheney, the Bush White House is an MBA’s dream: efficient, predictable, well controlled, on time, under budget.”

During Tuesday’s press briefing, glib White House spokesman Robert Gibbs did his best to bat down a rising chorus of questions about his boss’s judgment — not only on the nomination “glitches,” but also on an ever-growing list of exemptions to Obama’s no-lobbyists pledge. Echoing Bill Clinton’s “most ethical administration ever” and Nancy Pelosi’s “most ethical House ever” mantras, Gibbs defensively asserted: “The bar that we set is the highest that any administration in the country has ever set.”

Then how, pray tell, did all the president’s tax cheats make it past the front door? And where is Vice President Joe Biden to wag his finger at their lack of patriotism? Team Obama embraced these damaged candidates despite advanced knowledge of their lapses. Killefer’s tax lien was four years old. Questions about Daschle’s judgment have lingered for years. Ask GOP Sen. John Thune, who defeated Daschle the Dodger in 2004 after news broke of his bogus property-tax homestead exemption claim on his $1.9 million D.C. mansion — which he listed as his primary residence despite voting in South Dakota and claiming it as his primary residence in order to run for re-election.

The buck stops at the desk of Barack Obama. A little of that humility and personal responsibility he spoke so much about during his inaugural address is now in order.

Gateway Pundit found this great interview showcasing the sharp verbal acuity of the future US Senator of the state of New York, Caroline Kennedy.

NYers can sleep soundly – I am sure they will be represented quite well, you know?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W85XJADEHxU