Is Ground Zero mosque a First Amendment issue?

I've been reading a lot of interesting things about the Cordoba Mosque. Some interesting, some amusing, some disturbing, but all hyped up and full of hyperbole:

Paul Shmelzer of the Minnesota Independent reports that Muslim groups are upset that Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty said the Ground Zero mosque is "inappropriate."

I would say he's probably right. If it is really being placed there to build bridges, it's planners need to wake up, because it is having the opposite effect. National head of the Anti-Defamation league Abraham H. Foxman used the example of the Carmelite convent established near Auschwitz as a model(1) for how the mosques planners should act:

The lessons of an earlier and different controversy echo in this one. In 1993, Pope John Paul II asked 14 Carmelite Nuns to move their convent from just outside the Auschwitz death camp. The establishment of the convent near Auschwitz had stirred dismay among Jewish groups and survivors who felt that the location was an affront and a terrible disservice to the memory of millions of Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis in the Holocaust.

Just as we thought then that well-meaning efforts by Carmelite nuns to build a Catholic structure were insensitive and counterproductive to reconciliation, so too we believe it will be with building a mosque so close to Ground Zero.

Is it really that hard to understand? The Carmelites had no connection to Hitlers death camps, yet Pope John Paul II understood that the location of the convent was an afront to the Jewish community and that it should be moved. Feisal Abdul Rauf should be able to understand the same of his Cordoba mosque.

I even read a translated Arabic article that said the U.S. government should confiscate all funds set aside for the mosque. But while I agree that the mosque should not be built two blocks from Ground Zero and that it is offensive to many, we have a document that says our federal government cannot stop it's being built. Unless there is proof that it will be a haven/planning center for terrorists, no one will argue that it is not being built by an established religion. As such the First Amendment to the Constitution applies.

If a project with the stated purpose of "building bridges" causes this much controversy and animosity, it needs to be re-evaluated. It's obviously heading in the wrong direction at the outset.

 

(1)Mr. Foxman didn't include the entire Carmelite Auschwitz story. The convent was moved, but the controversy is ongoing.

OUR VIEW; 'GROUND ZERO' MOSQUE? OFFENSIVE, BUT AMERICAN.(Editorials): An article from: The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, NM)

Security, like all things, best in moderation

The Washington Post is publishing a series on the state of the United States Security Community, and it's pretty interesting. For example:

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

Wow. 51 agencies tracking money. 50,000 intelligence reports a year. I've been saying for a long time that the biggest problems leading up to 9/11 weren't lack of information, but too much information and too little communication. In the 9 years since then we have only added to the problem.  In describing their data gathering, the Post said;

The Post's online database of government organizations and private companies was built entirely on public records. The investigation focused on top-secret work because the amount classified at the secret level is too large to accurately track.

That's scary. The article quotes several sources who say there is no process in place to keep track of all of the inter-agency information, even for the few people who are in a position to try. What's scarier is that means we can't know if all that manpower, information gathering, and money tracking is doing any good. Add to those the fact that we've had recent near miss terrorist attacks in the U.S. and you realize that there is going to be another successful attack. The only question is, how severe will it be?

I recommend checking the Top Secret America website and reading the entire series as it comes out this week, although I admit it will be a bear. The first installment Monday was 17 screens long.