First of all, it isn't a Mosque, Second, it isn't at
Ground Zero & Third, First Amendment, Bitchez

The profound stupidity of Sarah Palin and the abjectly evil heart of Liz Cheney aside, I really thought that the ridiculous furor over the Cordoba House non-mosque that will be somewhat adjacent to "Ground Zero" would blow over because the same people screaming about it were the same ones who are forever waving copies of the Constitution and hollering that we need to "get back to Constitutional principles" at the top of their bloody fucking lungs.

Silly me...I just assumed that at least one of this new crop of constitutional scholars that came bubbling to the top of the tea pot last year might have, you know, read it once or twice.

Ha! All that did was prove I'm a librul, and not to be trusted because I want facts and words and what they, yanno, mean.

Apparently, the words of the very first amendment, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances," mean something different to people who haven't read them than they do to those of us who have. (Emphasis added, but you knew that already.)

Of course, the assholes doing the bitching about the liberalism of the founders who wrote that First Amendment think it can just be dismissed, abrogated even, just by saying, in an exasperated tone, "Everybody knows America's built on the rights of free expression, the rights to practice your faith, but come on."

But I think the thing that annoys me the most is the misperception that far too many are preying on that two blocks in lower Manhattan is the same thing as two blocks in, say, Fargo, or Des Moines, or Denver...or Kansas City.

Two blocks in New York has more people than entire area codes in other parts of the country. As I have tried to explain to people who have never been to New York for years...it isn't that the place is that big...it isn't...it's surrounded by water and the amount of available land is definitely finite. What New York is, is really, really tall.

And vibrant. And diverse.

Believe me when I tell you this...most residents of Lower Manhattan are not worried about the Cordoba Center. They know that there was a Muslim prayer room in the World Trade Center and a lot of Muslims died that day, too, and the people who did the killing? Yeah, they hated them most of all.

You want to know what my friends in The Village, and Brooklyn, and SoHo and Alphabet City are worried about? The restaurant that is planned as part of the facility. As one of them put it..."I love the Halal carts, but a nice cafe with freshly-made hummus instead of that crap that comes in a drum from some commissary in New Jersey where they used to process toxic waste would be awesome."

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