Update [2010-8-17 17:22:55 by Steven D]: Changed title because the proposed building is not a mosque. Mea culpa. It also isn’t located at the 9/11 site.
“The First Amendment protects freedom of religion,” reads a statement from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office (D-Nev.). “Senator Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built someplace else. If the Republicans are being sincere, they would help us pass this long overdue bill to help the first responders whose health and livelihoods have been devastated because of their bravery on 911, rather than continuing to block this much-needed legislation.”
Why is this an issue to anyone in Las Vegas or Reno or Tahoe? And no, all you Real Americans (you know the ones who fly the Confederate Flag and bring signs with nooses to tea party rallies) blaming every Muslim on Earth for 9/11 doesn’t make sense. You never cared squat about NYC until the the day the two towers were hit, and I doubt that for most of you any Muslim has done you any harm. Certainly not to the same extent your taxpayer dollars have done to fund the deaths of individuals in Muslim families in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This entire controversy is one of those continuing bizarro world episodes we’ve found ourselves in ever since Clinton was elected in 1992, and the insanity just keeps getting stranger and more absurd.
Meanwhile, a brief flashback to what the President said about Muslims in America and the world:
I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah.
That’s right. An American president dared to call Muslims peaceful and our friends! President George W. Bush in his address to Congress after the attacks on September 11, 2001.
Think about that all you Real Americans before you condemn the building of a mosque in a city in which you do not live and whose residents you often openly disparage. Even Bush didn’t go where you want to go: asking the Government to interfere with “private property rights” and the “freedom of religion.”