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Obama: "Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground, but"

Shadows of Palestinian women are seen at Qalandiya checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Ramalla August 28, 2009, on their way to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on the first Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Reuters, Fadi Arouri)

"Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground, but let me make clear," said the president at "a White House dinner celebrating the Islamic holy month of Ramadan" today, spinning effortlessly 180 degrees from his previous position that the Ground Zero Mosque controversy was a "local issue" which he would not weigh in on:

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.

Is that inspiring, or what? We are now being asked to believe that Mr. Obama had embraced the idea all along but was waiting for someone else to cast the first stone the locals to weigh in. Who woulda thunk it, a statist deferring to subsidiarity?

Aides to Mr. Obama say privately that he has always felt strongly about the proposed community center and mosque. But the White House did not want to weigh in until local authorities made a decision on the proposal, planned for two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.

We can only guess at what polling entrails revealed to the Leader of the Free World that it was okay to spit in the face of the overwhelming majority of his fellow Americans who oppose the building of an Islamic tower in the psychological shadow of what once was the Twin Towers. Perhaps it was an attempt to appease an angry base recently dissed by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs as "crazy" and in need of drug testing.

Update: Instalanche!

It’s the return of the "damning but.”

Update II: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update III: This story is not going to go away. Obama's speech and the old and new media's reportage/reaction top Memeorandum Saturday morning.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Greg Gutfeld and the Grave Robbers of Ground Zero

We're glad Rebecca Grunewald, who twitters as Duchess Rebecca, set her DVR to record Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld in the wee hours this morning. It's going to be a keeper! During his Post-Game Wrap-up Andy Levy picked her inspired "Ba'ath House" as the best of the twitter in yesterday's #gutfeldgaybarnames wordplay. For the funnyman's proposed gay bar in the shadow of Cordoba House, aka Ground Zero mosque, we're suggesting tastefully atmospheric interiors along the lines of Hammam años Árabes en Córdoba, above and below.

"I, personally, think it's a brilliant idea. I absolutely abhor all of this anti-mosque nonsense currently going on in this country," sniffs cocksure Mediaite columnist Jon Bershad, utterly missing the larger point of Greg Gutfeld's proposal to build "the first gay bar that caters not only to the west, but also Islamic gay men" next to the mosque Park51 near Ground Zero. Even as he praises the Red Eye ringmaster's wit, Bershad struts about, dissing us low-lifes who beg to differ with him on the appropriateness of constructing a towering Islamic center-cum-mosque on sacred ground that was desecrated by avowed adherents of Islam:

It’s disgusting bigotry plain and simple. However, just because I support Muslim Americans in their fight against anti-Islam prejudice, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get a few dings for their religion’s own prejudice against homosexuals. If you want to be treated fairly, you should treat others fairly as well. Still though, the only thing that would make this plan perfect would be if Gutfeld created a chain of gay bars and plopped them down next to churches and synagogues since it’s not like those religions have been super open-minded.

"And also, it's a fear of debate, " Greg Gutfeld gutted opponents' playing of the tattered "race card": "Rather than argue against my point that it's simply obnoxious to build the mosque, they'd rather belch 'race!' It's a reflex."

The siren song of political correctness beckons Mediaite's Bershad onto the shoals of moral equivalence and irrelevance. He should read the DC Examiner's editorial on the horrors of Shari'a law, as most recently and obscenely exemplified in the story of Aisha, that Afghani girl we blogged about the other day, whose nose and ears were sliced off for "shaming" her arranged husband's parents by running away from their cruelty:

Such barbarities remind us that no place must be given for moral equivalence on these issues. If our civil law doesn't permit Mormon polygamy, Fundamentalist snake handling or Christian Scientist denial of medical care for children, even less can it tolerate Muslim mutilation and murder of women. Those who can't — or won't — see the difference between a murderous intolerance and the intolerance of murder should be pitied and ignored.

One more must-read for Bershad and others who share his distaste for "all of this anti-mosque nonsense," Robert VerBruggen at NRO, who quotes from "yet another interview in which Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the leading figure behind the Cordoba House (the “Ground Zero mosque”), explains away terrorism":

"They feel the need to conflagrate," he says of Muslims who feel they've been "humiliated" and ignored."

The interview was conducted for a Malaysia Matters podcast during the 2008 presidential campaign. (The Cordoba Initiative website references the podcast, but the provided link is dead.) While Rauf repeatedly positions himself as someone “trying to bridge the divide” between the West and the Muslim world, he also offers comments regarding the West’s culpability for terror against it …

When asked whether the U.S. bears “ultimate responsibility” for “any reactions,” Rauf responds, “I wouldn’t say ultimate. It’s the one who leads in the dance” …

Also: “In order to bridge the divide, we have to understand the dynamics, that there’s a certain — there’s a psychology … If you do this, you get this reaction” …

As argued on NRO and elsewhere, there is nothing the government can or should do to disrupt the construction or operation of the Cordoba House. But as the project’s supporters press on in the face of overwhelming public outcry, and as Rauf’s beliefs come increasingly into the light, arguments that the community center and mosque are meant as anything but a finger in the eye of America become less believable.

Fortunately, the blogosphere and Twitter are alive with mockery, top tactic in Glenn Reynolds's list of ways to thwart the "good intentions" of "America's Ruling Class," in this case elitists like Bershad, Mayor Bloomberg & Company who would accuse us of bigotry for fighting back against the grave robbers of Ground Zero. Not to mention those crusading — yes, that word! — frontline warriors like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, who are leading the charge in the war of words to defeat creeping Shari'a.

This just in on Twitter from David Burge of Iowahawkblog:

#Gutfeldgaybarnames TGIFriday Prayers

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.