Skip to main content

Obama, The Mosque And Property Rights

President Barack Obama and family stuck their toes in Florida for 26 hours on their way to a ten day family stay at toney Martha’s Vineyard. Peter Nichols of the Tribune’s Washington Bureau explains the motivation for the trip:

“Having urged people to visit the Gulf Coast, the Obamas risked looking elitist, so White House aides arranged the trip to the Florida Panhandle. They got the pictures they wanted. Obama took a dip in the bay and high-fived his daughter, who made a hole in one at a miniature golf course.”
While in Florida, Mr. Obama stuck his toe, once again, into the New York mosque-cultural center controversy.

While he appeared have approved the building of a mosque and cultural center a little more than a stone’s throw from the place where, more than 9 years ago, jihadi terrorists had rubblized the World Trade Center Twin Towers, Mr. Obama now began to massage the message. The nineth anniversary of the terrorist incident in New York is coming around this September 11th.

The earlier message of the former constitutional law professor – that the U.S. Constitution makes no distinction between various faiths but extends the religious protections of the first Amendment to all alike – remained unchanged in Mr. Obama’s new formulation; however, the president wanted his critics to understand that he was not commenting on the “wisdom” of siting the mosque and cultural center so close to the crater where the towers once stood:

"I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there," said the vacationing president.”
Nichols supplies the obvious gloss:

“He was not necessarily endorsing ‘the wisdom’ of putting a mosque at that location. Rather, the former constitutional law professor said he was standing up for the landowners' right to put a mosque on private property, even if the building would be near the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.”
Some of Mr. Obama’s fiercest critics would consider the president’s new found concern for property rights touching. Others on the left who favor those programs of Mr. Obama that impinge on property rights may well consider the emphasis Mr. Obama has placed on them dangerous and alarming.

Comments

Ralph said…
Don, I think 9/11/10 will be the ninth anniversary, not the tenth...
Don Pesci said…
Ralph,

Thanks. You're right. I made the change.

Popular posts from this blog

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Powell, the JI, And Economic literacy

Powell, Pesci Substack The Journal Inquirer (JI), one of the last independent newspapers in Connecticut, is now a part of the Hearst Media chain. Hearst has been growing by leaps and bounds in the state during the last decade. At the same time, many newspapers in Connecticut have shrunk in size, the result, some people seem to think, of ad revenue smaller newspapers have lost to internet sites and a declining newspaper reading public. Surviving papers are now seeking to recover the lost revenue by erecting “pay walls.” Like most besieged businesses, newspapers also are attempting to recoup lost revenue through staff reductions, reductions in the size of the product – both candy bars and newspapers are much smaller than they had been in the past – and sell-offs to larger chains that operate according to the social Darwinian principles of monopolistic “red in tooth and claw” giant corporations. The first principle of the successful mega-firm is: Buy out your predator before he swallows

Down The Rabbit Hole, A Book Review

Down the Rabbit Hole How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime by Brent McCall & Michael Liebowitz Available at Amazon Price: $12.95/softcover, 337 pages   “ Down the Rabbit Hole: How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime ,” a penological eye-opener, is written by two Connecticut prisoners, Brent McCall and Michael Liebowitz. Their book is an analytical work, not merely a page-turner prison drama, and it provides serious answers to the question: Why is reoffending a more likely outcome than rehabilitation in the wake of a prison sentence? The multiple answers to this central question are not at all obvious. Before picking up the book, the reader would be well advised to shed his preconceptions and also slough off the highly misleading claims of prison officials concerning the efficacy of programs developed by dusty old experts who have never had an honest discussion with a real convict. Some of the experts are more convincing cons than the cons, p