Please, don't go crazy! Can you imagine that it has come to this? With all of the problems in this world there are "officials" that can act on this type of complaint... and, there are people going around reading church bulletin walls trying to ferret out criminals that might be trying to advertise for Christian room mates. If you will notice there are strong constraints on every aspect of being a human except for gender, hmmm, am I the only one who sees a familiar pattern? I seem to remember words like "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and doesn't it seem that the pursuit of happiness might include advertising for a Christian room-mate if you are a Christian and desire continuity in your life? BH

Michigan Woman Faces Civil Rights Complaint for Seeking a Christian Roommate

Published October 22, 2010| FoxNews.com

A civil rights complaint has been filed against a woman in Grand Rapids, Mich., who posted an advertisement at her church last July seeking a Christian roommate.

The ad "expresses an illegal preference for a Christian roommate, thus excluding people of other faiths,” according to the complaint filed by the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan.

"It's a violation to make, print or publish a discriminatory statement," Executive Director Nancy Haynes told Fox News. "There are no exemptions to that."

Haynes said the unnamed 31-year-old woman’s case was turned over to the Michigan Department of Civil Rights. Depending on the outcome of the case, she said, the woman could face several hundreds of dollars in fines and “fair housing training so it doesn’t happen again.”

Harold Core, director of public affairs with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, told the Grand Rapids Press that the Fair Housing Act prevents people from publishing an advertisement stating their preference of religion, race or handicap with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling.

"It's really difficult to say at this point what could potentially happen," he told the newspaper, noting that there are exemptions in the law for gender when there is a shared living space.

But Joel Oster, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the woman free of charge, describes the case as "outrageous."

"Clearly this woman has a right to pick and choose who she wants to live with," he said.

"Christians shouldn't live in fear of being punished by the government for being Christians. It is completely absurd to try to penalize a single Christian woman for privately seeking a Christian roommate at church -- an obviously legal and constitutionally protected activity."

Haynes said the person who filed the initial complaint saw the ad on the church bulletin board and contacted the local fair housing organization.

The ad included the words, "Christian roommate wanted," along with the woman's contact information. Had the ad not included the word "Christian," Haynes said, it would not have been illegal.

"If you read it and you were not Christian, would you not feel welcome to rent there?" Haynes asked.

Oster said he hopes the case will eventually be dropped and that he's sent a letter to the state asking the authorities to dismiss the case as groundless.

"The First Amendment guarantees us Freedom of Religion," he said. "And we have the right to live with someone of the same faith. The Michigan Department of Civil Rights is denying her rights by pursuing this complaint."

But Haynes said officials plan on pursuing the matter.

"We want to make sure it doesn't happen again," she said.

Todd Starnes is a Fox News Radio Reporter and the author of a new book on the culture war, “Dispatches From Bitter America.”

Obama has no clue about entrepreneurship

By: LINDA CHAVEZ 


Examiner Columnist


President Obama has finally admitted that a core premise of his nearly trillion-dollar stimulus package was false. In an interview this week with The New York Times' Peter Baker, the president acknowledged that "there's no such thing as shovel-ready projects," despite the president's near-constant invocation of the term over a two-year period to explain how government spending was going to create jobs.

The president's admission is no minor matter; it goes to the heart of why his economic policies have been such a failure. Not since President Jimmy Carter's confession in 1980 that it took the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan for him to fully understand "what the Soviets' ultimate goals are" has a sitting president so fully exposed his ignorance.

Obama's admission might be refreshing if it meant he would rethink his economic assumptions, but the Baker interview gives no such indication. Instead, the president seems to think his biggest problem has been his failure to communicate his policies effectively.

"There is probably a perverse pride in my administration -- and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top -- that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular," he said. "And I think anybody who's occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can't be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion."

The statements are both stunningly arrogant and misleading. The president of the United States is not a philosopher king. In a democracy, the president doesn't determine what "the right thing" is and let the people who put him in office be damned.

Nor did the president and his team neglect the "marketing and P.R." of his policies. The "shovel-ready" comments were all salesmanship and no substance.

In his first year in office, the president gave 411 speeches, sat for 158 press interviews, conducted 42 news conferences, and visited 30 states, according to a compilation by CBS News. Failing to communicate was not the issue.

The president's problem is that he has neither experience in, nor understanding of, the private economy. He has worked exclusively in the nonprofit and government sector.

He has an unlimited faith in government and limited trust in private industry. And the president surrounds himself with people who share his myopia.

When the president visited plants from Buffalo to San Francisco on his much-touted jobs tours during the spring and summer, he was there to tell workers that government saved or created their jobs.

But that is not how it's done. Job creation happens when individuals take personal risks: A man notices that all his friends and neighbors have garages stuffed with junk they don't want and starts a new business with $700 in startup capital and an old beat-up truck. A few years later, Brian Scudamore's 1-800-GOT-JUNK has 100 franchises across the country.

A young woman decides her chocolate chip cookies deserve to be enjoyed beyond her family. Debbi Fields borrows money, opens a small storefront, and within seven years, her company, Mrs. Fields Cookies, had revenues of more than $45 million.

A college student spends his time in his dorm room building personal computers for his friends and selling them for less than the name brands. He drops out of school, but by the time he's 27, Michael Dell is the youngest CEO on the Fortune 500 list of largest companies in America.

These individuals created great wealth for themselves, but they also created thousands of jobs for other people. The fallacy in Obama's thinking is the assumption we'd be better off taxing rich people more and having government spend the money directly.

But government can never be as efficient as the market. Scudamore, Fields, and Dell might just as well have failed as succeeded.

When entrepreneurs fail, they've lost their own money and that of investors who have freely chosen to take the risk.

Government programs, however, play with other people's money -- since government has no money of its own. When government programs fail, the consequences aren't born by the people making the decisions but by the taxpayers.

So when Obama finally realizes there's no such thing as a shovel-ready project, he's admitting he's wasted our money -- billions of dollars -- not his own. But his only answer is to raise taxes so he can spend yet more. It's the kind of thinking that dooms his presidency and our economy.

Examiner Columnist Linda Chavez is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate.

Chris Mathews reading from the

official MSNBC "talking points" teleprompter....

referring to the Tea Party and what would happen

if they were in the Chilean mine for 69 days... 

“They would have been killing each other after about two days.”

Hard to believe that the average population is viewed in such

a negative way. It couldn't be that he just doesn't see the common

disagreement with the direction of the current government

as being the "designed-in" balance our founders envisioned. He, and

others are desperate to do anything to shut up average Americans and

to marginalize any form of dissent.

The Colbert Democrats

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, October 8, 2010

A president's first midterm election is inevitably a referendum on his two years in office. The bad news for Democrats is that President Obama's "reelect" number is 38 percent -- precisely Bill Clinton's in October 1994, the eve of the wave election that gave Republicans control of the House for the first time in 40 years.

Yet this same poll found that 65 percent view Obama favorably "as a person." The current Democratic crisis is not about the man -- his alleged lack of empathy, ability to emote, etc., requiring remediation with backyard, shirt-sleeved shoulder rubbing with the folks -- but about the policies.

And the problem with the policies is twofold: ideology and effectiveness. First, Obama, abetted by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, tried to take a center-right country to the left. They grossly misread the 2008 election. It was a mandate to fix the economy and restore American confidence. Obama read it as a mandate to change the American social contract, giving it a more European social-democratic stamp, by fundamentally extending the reach and power of government in health care, energy, education, finance and industrial policy.

Obama succeeded with health care. Unfortunately for the Democrats, that and Obama's other signature achievement -- the stimulus -- were not exactly what the folks were clamoring for. What they wanted was economic recovery.

Here the Democrats failed the simple test of effectiveness. The economy is extraordinarily weak, unemployment is unacceptably high, and the only sure consequence of the stimulus is nearly $1 trillion added to the national debt in a single stroke.

And yet, to these albatrosses of ideological overreach and economic ineffectiveness, the Democrats have managed in the past few weeks to add a third indictment: incompetence.

For the first time since modern budgeting was introduced with the Budget Act of 1974, the House failed to even write a budget. This in a year of extraordinary deficits, rising uncertainty and jittery financial markets. Gold is going through the roof. Confidence in the dollar and the American economy is falling -- largely because of massive overhanging debt. Yet no budget emerged from Congress to give guidance, let alone reassurance, about future U.S. revenues and spending.

That's not all. Congress has not passed a single appropriations bill. To keep the government going, Congress passed a so-called continuing resolution (CR) before adjourning to campaign. The problem with continuing to spend at the current level is that the last two years have seen a huge 28 percent jump in non-defense discretionary spending. The CR continues this profligacy, aggravating an already serious debt problem.

As if this were not enough, Congress adjourned without even a vote -- nay, without even a Democratic bill -- on the expiring Bush tax cuts. This is the ultimate in incompetence. After 20 months of control of the White House and Congress -- during which they passed an elaborate, 1,000-page micromanagement of every detail of American health care -- the Democrats adjourned without being able to tell the country what its tax rates will be on Jan. 1.

It's not just income taxes. It's capital gains and dividends, too. And the estate tax, which will careen insanely from 0 to 55 percent when the ball drops on Times Square on New Year's Eve.

Nor is this harmless incompetence. To do this at a time when $2 trillion of capital is sitting on the sidelines because of rising uncertainty -- and there is no greater uncertainty than next year's tax rates -- is staggeringly irresponsible.

As if this display of unseriousness -- no budget, no appropriations bills, no tax bill -- were not enough, some genius on a House Judiciary subcommittee invites parodist Stephen Colbert to testify as an expert witness on immigration. He then pulls off a nervy mockery of the whole proceedings -- my favorite was his request to have his colonoscopy inserted in the Congressional Record -- while the chairwoman sits there clueless.

A fitting end for the 111th Congress. But not quite. Colbert will return to the scene of the crime on Oct. 30 as the leader of one of two mock rallies on the Mall. Comedian Jon Stewart leads the other. At a time of near-10 percent unemployment, a difficult and draining war abroad, and widespread disgust with government overreach and incompetence, they will light up the TV screens as the hip face of the new liberalism -- just three days before the election.

I suspect the electorate will declare itself not amused.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

28 days to go... even the "dead fish" have abandoned the coming blowout!

Obama Approval Index Month-by-Month

Obama’s Full-Month Approval Rating Falls to New Low

When tracking President Obama’s job approval on a daily basis, people sometimes get so caught up in the day-to-day fluctuations that they miss the bigger picture. To look at the longer-term trends, Rasmussen Reports compiles the numbers on a full-month basis, and the results can be seen in the graphics above.

The number of voters who Strongly Disapprove of the president’s performance inched up a point to a new high of 44% in September.  At the same time, the number who Strongly Approve held steady at 27%.

Those figures generate a full month Presidential Approval Index rating of -17, down a point from last month.  Over the past four months, the Presidential Approval Index has been at -16 or -17 every month. Those are the lowest levels yet recorded for the current president. From December 2009 to March 2010, the president’s approval index bounced back-and-forth between -14 and -15.  In April, the index jumped four points to -11, the highest level of optimism measured since October 2009.  That number, however, has steadily declined in the following months.

The full month numbers show Strong Approval from 54% of Democrats with Strong Disapproval from 75% of Republicans and 49% of unaffiliated voters.  These findings show little change from last month.

Rasmussen

30 more days.... maybe we can get this ship up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-4J5j74VPw

j - u - g - g - e - r - n - a - u - t

NO SURPRISE HERE

John Hinderacker, Powerline

Glenn Reynolds has done a series of posts on economic news at InstaPundit under the heading "Unexpected!" The failure of the administration's liberal economic policies to bear fruit--the fact that, on the contrary, they have worsened our economic problems--is always unexpected to those who, apparently, have no knowledge of economic history. Some stories, though, are not just foreseeable but inevitable. This one, from the New York Times, is in that category: Job Loss Looms as Part of Stimulus Act Expires.

Tens of thousands of people will lose their jobs within weeks unless Congress extends one of the more effective job-creating programs in the $787 billion stimulus act: a $1 billion New Deal-style program that directly paid the salaries of unemployed people so they could get jobs in government, at nonprofit organizations and at many small businesses. ...

The money that pays Mr. Davis's salary, and the salaries of tens of thousands of other people around the country, will dry up after next Thursday, when the welfare program in the stimulus act that pays the bills for those jobs is set to expire. While the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress want to extend the program, they are meeting stiff resistance from Republicans, many of whom oppose all things stimulus.

So, this is a surprise to whom, exactly? When the stimulus bill poured many millions of dollars into subsidizing employment by state and local governments, countless commentators pointed out that the impact would be temporary at best, since the subsidy would inevitably run out, leaving those governments exactly where they were in the first place--either unwilling or unable to hire the workers in question on a long-term basis. The workers, meanwhile, would only have deferred the need to find a job that will support them and their families for the long haul.

Now, the Times reports that Democrats want the subsidies extended. Naturally. But for how long? Do they want Washington to subsidize indefinitely employment that is otherwise uneconomic? The federal government could pay people to dig holes and fill them in again, and most Democrats, I suspect, would consider that a stimulus to the economy.

The case is much the same with respect to the unprecedented extensions of unemployment benefits that have been enacted by the Democratic Congress. Most Democrats, I suspect, don't understand why such benefits should ever expire. Economists and many others with common sense, meanwhile, warned that extensions of unemployment benefits would help keep unemployment high. That has turned out to be true, but don't expect the Dems to catch on any time soon.

Visigoths at the gate?

By Charles Krauthammer

When facing a tsunami, what do you do? Pray, and tell yourself stories. I am not privy to the Democrats' private prayers, but I do hear the stories they're telling themselves. The new meme is that there's a civil war raging in the Republican Party. The Tea Party will wreck it from within and prove to be the Democrats' salvation.

I don't blame anyone for seeking a deus ex machina when about to be swept out to sea. But this salvation du jour is flimsier than most.

In fact, the big political story of the year is the contrary: that a spontaneous and quite anarchic movement with no recognized leadership or discernible organization has been merged with such relative ease into the Republican Party.

The Tea Party could have become Perot '92, an anti-government movement that spurned the Republicans, went third-party and cost George H.W. Bush reelection, ending 12 years of Republican rule. Had the Tea Party gone that route, it would have drained the Republican Party of its most mobilized supporters and deprived Republicans of the sweeping victory that awaits them on Nov. 2.

Instead, it planted its flag within the party and, with its remarkable energy, created the enthusiasm gap. Such gaps are measurable. This one is a chasm. This year's turnout for the Democratic primaries (as a percentage of eligible voters) was the lowest ever recorded. Republican turnout was the highest since 1970.

True, Christine O'Donnell's nomination in Delaware may cost the Republicans an otherwise safe seat (and possibly control of the Senate), and Sharron Angle in Nevada is running only neck-and-neck with an unpopular Harry Reid. On balance, however, the Tea Party contribution is a large net plus, with its support for such strong candidates as Marco Rubio of Florida, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Joe Miller of Alaska, Mike Lee of Utah. Even Rand Paul, he of the shaky start in Kentucky, sports an eight-point lead. All this in addition to the significant Tea Party contribution to the tide that will carry dozens of Republicans into the House.

Nonetheless, some Democrats have convinced themselves that they have found the issue with which to salvage 2010. "President Obama's political advisers," reports the New York Times, "are considering a range of ideas, including national advertisements, to cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists."

Sweet irony. Fear-over-hope rides again, this time with Democrats in the saddle warning darkly about "the Republican Tea Party" (Joe Biden). Message: Vote Democratic and save the nation from a Visigoth mob with a barely concealed tinge of racism.

First, this is so at variance with reality that it's hard to believe even liberals believe it. The largest Tea Party event yet was the recent Glenn Beck rally on the Mall. The hordes descending turned out to be several hundred thousand cheerful folks in what, by all accounts, had the feel of a church picnic. And they left the place nearly spotless -- the first revolution in recorded history that collected its own trash.

Second, the general public is fairly evenly split in its views of the Tea Party. It experiences none of the horror that liberals do -- and think others should. Moreover, the electorate supports by 2-to-1 the Tea Party signature issues of smaller government and lower taxes.

Third, you would hardly vote against the Republican in your state just because there might be a (perceived) too-conservative Republican running somewhere else. How would, say, Paul running in Kentucky deter someone from voting for Mark Kirk in Illinois? Or, to flip the parties, will anyone in Nevada refuse to vote for Harry Reid because Chris Coons, a once self-described "bearded Marxist," is running as a Democrat in Delaware?

Fourth, what sane Democrat wants to nationalize an election at a time of 9.6 percent unemployment and such disappointment with Obama that just this week several of his own dreamy 2008 supporters turned on him at a cozy town hall? The Democrats' only hope is to run local campaigns on local issues. That's how John Murtha's former district director hung on to his boss's seat in a special election in Pennsylvania.

Newt Gingrich had to work hard -- getting Republican candidates to sign the Contract with America -- to nationalize the election that swept Republicans to victory in 1994. A Democratic anti-Tea Party campaign would do that for the Republicans -- nationalize the election, gratis -- in 2010. As a very recent former president -- now preferred (Public Policy Polling, Sept. 1) in bellwether Ohio over the current one by 50 percent to 42 percent -- once said: Bring 'em on.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Obama’s Delusions of Competence 

The president overestimates the government's ability to solve problems.

Mona Charen

 We Have a Problem” proclaims Vanity Fair magazine. In an eerie echo of the verdicts passed during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, namely that the presidency was “too big for one man,” Vanity Fair now declares “The evidence that Washington cannot function — that it’s ‘broken,’ as Vice President Joe Biden has said — is all around.”

The Vanity Fair piece is a long apologia for President Obama’s perceived ineffectiveness, and reflects — no surprise here — the Obama interpretation of events. “The G.O.P.,” writes Todd Purdum, “has spent most of the period since the inauguration in near lockstep refusal to give the president votes for any of his major initiatives, from the economic-stimulus bill to health-care reform.” This is President Obama’s constant plaint — though it rings hollow coming from someone who took office with comfortable majorities in both houses of Congress.

But in the course of documenting the difficulty of governing, Vanity Fair does make a conservative point. Government is too big. Purdum quotes from just one day’s Federal Register:

The edition for this ordinary Wednesday comes in at 350 pages of dense, dark type. It is unimaginably varied: you’ll find rules for the importation of Chinese honey; proposed conservation standards for home furnaces; permitting procedures for the experimental use of pesticides; announcements concerning the awarding of new radio and TV licenses; and hundreds of other items.

The president himself doesn’t at all concede that government is attempting to do too much (and failing at most of it). On the contrary, his vanity (and it is a common one for left-wingers) is that he believes his particular ideas on business investment, medical procedures, housing, and thousands of other matters are the solutions to our woes, but “politics” keeps getting in the way.

We’ve seen President Obama’s delusions of expertise on display before. Without any trial period, demonstration project, or peer-reviewed study, the federal government dictated that medical records be digitalized and extracted $19 billion from taxpayers to fund the transition. The new systems, the president insisted, would prevent errors, reduce costs, and improve patient care. But as the Wall Street Journal reported, “a 2009 study in the American Journal of Medicine found that hospitals with more-advanced electronic systems fared no better than other hospitals on measures of administrative costs. . . . Meanwhile, many doctors and nurses say they’re frustrated with the technology. While some say electronic records have improved the way they practice medicine, many others say the systems are time-consuming distractions that take away from patient care.”

Digitalized medical records would certainly have evolved with time — just as paper books and newspapers are rapidly losing ground to their electronic competitors. But without government intrusion, the programs would have developed organically, adjusting to user feedback and actual experience — and costing the taxpayers nothing.

At his September 10 press conference, the president announced another “common sense” idea: We must stop “giving tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas.” A familiar trope from the 2008 campaign, this “idea” is really another tax increase.

The president’s refrain notwithstanding, there is no section of the U.S. tax code that rewards U.S. companies for outsourcing American jobs. American firms pay taxes on their worldwide income. Our effective corporate tax rate, the highest in the OECD according to a Cato Institute study, puts our companies at a competitive disadvantage abroad. The tax code accordingly does permit U.S. multinationals to “defer” taxes on income earned abroad that is reinvested abroad. They pay taxes on that income only when they repatriate the earnings to the United States.

But eliminating the “deferral” would simply increase corporate rates still further, undercutting the profitability of American companies with overseas operations. As Cato’s Daniel Griswold explains, “There is no evidence that expanding employment at U.S.- owned affiliates comes at the expense of overall employment by parent companies back home in the United States. In fact, the evidence and experience of U.S. multinational companies points in the opposite direction: foreign and domestic operations tend to complement each other and expand together. . . . More activity and sales abroad often require the hiring of more managers, accountants, lawyers, engineers, and production workers at the parent company.”

Reducing the rate of corporate taxation would make U.S. companies more competitive overseas while also attracting more foreign investment here.

But reducing taxes, like reducing regulation, or permitting the market to shape digital medical records, offends President Obama’s preference for top-down decision-making. He isn’t deciding, Carter-like, who should use the White House tennis courts, but he is attempting to do pretty much everything else, with similar results.

– Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010 Creators Syndicate.

Mike Walker, USMC Colonel (retired)

President Obama, Newt Gingrich, the Manhattan Mosque, and Burning Books

All,

It is not too often that I get up the chutzpah (being Irish Catholic) to criticize both President Obama and Newt Gingrich in one e-mail.  The controversy over the Mosque in Manhattan with its attendant drama has provided that ample pause for thoughtful written reflection, or so I kid myself.

1. Mr. President, words matter.  Recently you made a statement that is as dangerous to the lives of Americans abroad as the foolishness of some very minor minister in Florida.  

Here is where the damage was done: "...the idea that we would burn sacred texts."  We?  WE, Mr. President?  

As my Marine Drill Instructor used to say: "Unless there is a mouse in your pocket, there ain't no WE here!"  Of course, on those occasions that was followed by an endearing epithet like "maggot," "moron," "numb nuts," etc.  But you are the President and I was simply an aspiring Marine.

Sir, let me set the record straight, I am as disgusted and offended by the proposed Quran burning as anyone.  Of course, I was equally disgusted and offended by the "art show" presenting a crucifix of Jesus Christ submerged in a jar of urine.  There wasn't any "we" in that sorry episode either.  

When the President of the United States of America says "we" it means us all.  The President is saying “we” did it and “we” are all responsible. That is plain wrong.  What it does is give an official sanction to al Qaeda and their ilk, by the highest level of our representative government, to take revenge for this possible outrage against any and all of "we." 

Having served as a Marine once in the Balkans and twice in Iraq, I know from savage personal experience what form that revenge will take.  I fully know that "we" means targeting for death any American man, woman, or child, at any place and at any time. 

While I do hold our Commander in Chief responsible for the words he chooses this is also an indictment of his senior advisors for National Security, Counterterrorism and Homeland Security.  That our President would use “we” i.e. “all Americans” to affix responsibility to this outrageous act to a worldwide audience must lie squarely at their feet.  Shame on them for their failure to the President, the American men and women serving today in harms way, and to the American people as a whole.

2. Newt!  Although I frequently disagree with you there are very few Americans who make as compelling and reasoned an argument in favor of their convictions as you.  However, a friend sent a newsletter you wrote in July entitled: “Newt Gingrich Statement on Proposed Mosque/Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero.” Here is my opining on that.

Newt Gingrich is right in publicly "shaming" Saudi Arabia about their intolerance of other faiths.  However, he creates a false nexus between the proposed Cordoba House and Saudi Arabia.  This is not a project created and funded by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  For example, it would be as if one opposed the building of a new health clinic associated with the Cedars-Sinai Hospital because one opposes the policies of Israel.  The connection is too frail to accept as valid. 

 As to the name “Cordoba” to which Mr. Gingrich took offense, rather than a celebration of Islamic military prowess it can equally be argued as a warning of the limitations and failures of spreading Islam through the sword vice peaceful evangelical conversion.  The Arab armies in Spain did convert a church in Cordoba into a mosque only to see it return as an even grander church, a cathedral, in point of fact.  “Cordoba” can also be seen a lesson on how the gains of an armed jihad can be as fleeting and futile as the blowing breeze.

3. Conclusions on the Mosque

There needs to be full transparency regarding the project leaders and funding sources for this development.  Every project leader and donor should publicly and on the record pledge full and unqualified support of freedom of religion and religious tolerance in the United States of America. 

If they refuse to make that public avowal then this project should face strong and continuous public condemnation, protest, boycott, and other appropriate acts of civil disobedience as the price to be paid for accepting leadership and/or funding from those who practice, aid, or abet religious intolerance in a free and democratic republic. 

If you want to defeat an unjust and intolerant act here is the rule to follow: Non-violent advocacy of the truth is a far more powerful path to religious tolerance within the boundaries our great nation than any intolerant provocation or tactic.  

If the leaders and financial backers of the “Cordoba House in Manhattan” are tolerant and peacemakers as we define those terms in the United States then they have nothing to fear.  If the case is otherwise then the truth will out and they will fail.

Semper Fi,

Mike

Paul Mirengoff of Powerline

Hugh Hewitt directs our attention to this report by a Los Angeles Times blogger/reporting, according to which 41 Obama administration officials owe $831,000 in back taxes. That's more than $20,000 per official -- not quite Tim Geithner territory but bad enough.

Nor are things much better on Capitol Hill. There, it has beenreported, just 638 workers owe the IRS $9.3 million in back taxes.

As I understand it, these numbers focus on the leading miscreants and exclude administration officials and congressional staffers who have fully met their tax obligations. But it's still alarming to think that so many within these two categories have stiffed the government they represent.

And here's one more. According to the same LA TImes piece, at the Justice Department, our primary federal law enforcement agency, 1,971 employees owe $14,350,152 in overdue taxes.

It's no secret that our governing class sees itself as entitled. Even so, I would not have thought that the sense of entitlement extends quite this far.