Category Archives: Culture
First Amendment vs. First Amendment
Pelosi wants an investigation of first amendment stomping Ground Zero Mosque protesters. Nat Hentoff is investigating the man behind the mosque, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Hentoff, a powerful defender of the first amendment, doesn’t care for the location of Cordoba House either. Here’s his column.
The New Republic’s Todd Gitlin thinks the mosque is swell. Both writers take a look at the Imam’s book, What’s Right with Islam is What’s Right with America, and his claim that Islamic law fits the U.S. Constitution. Here’s Gitlin’s column.
The Blagoshpere
Here’s all the inside Blago baseball you need to know in a lengthy Chicago News Cooperative piece by James Warren
Zero Sum
NYC’s Landmarks Preservation Commission cleared the way for a new mosque and community center, Cordoba House, to be built two blocks from ground zero. Mayor Bloomberg says this is a fine example of American religious tolerance. 9/11 Mayor Rudy calls it a “desecration”. Even if it’s built with the best of intentions, Dan Senor says in the WSJ, it will be seen by Muslim extremists as victory monument. Atlantic Wire has the pros and cons here.
Post-Racial Polling Place
It began this week with the NAACP accusing the tea party of harboring racists. The tea party, such as it is organized, excommunicated a California member for a post mocking the NAACP in a racial way. Seemingly in exchange, the NAACP got an agriculture department employee fired for racial comments posted on Breitbart. Except, when her remarks were considered in their full context, she was making a point against racism. Tea Party types say all the racism talk is an attempt to distract from the butt kicking Democrats are taking in the polls due to the Obama agenda. But that whould require a conspiracy – a cabal. Oh wait, it turns out there actually was a sort of media cabal- on a list serve called Journolist. And an ambition of one of its members, Spencer Ackerman, was to create a diversion to get the Jeremiah Wright story off the front page. The diversion? Random accusations of racism.
Here’s a quote from Ackerman’s email as posted by the Daily Caller: “If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
Here’s a great essay by Victor Davis Hanson about the racial mess we find ourselves in today.
And another good one from Slate’s William Saletan. He goes into the details to conclude that Andrew Breitbart lied about Shirley Sherrod and the NAACP.
Diversity
Kathleen Parker noticed that if Kagan is confirmed all three women justices will be from New York.
