Freedom of religion

I confess I haven't followed the mosque at Ground Zero story that closely until today. I assumed it was going to be just another shiny distraction for the usual hatemongering wingnuts and would die out on its own. Sadly I was wrong. I see, in a grim illustration of how far our media has fallen, the NYT is pimping the ADL's thinly veiled bigotry this morning.

So we have yet another colossal tradmed fail in merely reporting the bigots' commentary and it's once again the bloggers who provide the context. To start, there's already a mosque a block away from the proposed site of the new one. It's been there since 1970. Also the new site is not even a mosque, it's a cultural center.

And J Street nails an important point:

What better ammunition to feed the Osama bin Ladens of the world and their claim of anti-Muslim bias in the United States as they seek to whip up global jihad than to hold this proposal for a Muslim religious center to a different and tougher standard than other religious institutions would be.

Like free speech, when you deny religious freedom to one religion, it endangers that freedom for all religions. This should be obvious. Not sure why it's not.