Some further thoughts, left and right, on Pres. Obama’s speech supporting the proposition that the constitution’s provision of religious freedom for all means that the Constitution provides religious freedom for all.

Earlier today, Barack Obama responded to the avalanche of vitriol from the right that greeted his still earlier remarks about religious freedom in the United States of America. Some people are saying that Obama essentially “walked back” his earlier strong support for the idea that Muslims have the same constitutional right as any other faith tradition has in this country to build a mosque on private...

Barack Hussein Obama could have avoided this one, declaring the issue of a mosque near Ground Zero a local decision, as his Press Secretary has done for weeks, but the 44th President has taken his cue from the 35th by coming out in favor of building it. In a “Profiles in Courage” moment, he declares: “Let me be clear: as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right...

President Barack Obama has thrown his support behind the controversial plan to build a mosque two blocks away from “Ground Zero” in New York City. Here’s the video of his remarks so you can judge for yourself before the inevitable politicking on his remarks begins. These are his complete remarks, so you can judge them in a better context then just a short snippet or one taken out of context...

Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

It often takes many years to accurately decipher the past’s important events and the overall trajectory of history. Singular events must be placed in their proper global and historical context. Then the law of unintended consequences has to play its devious and essential part in history. The September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington DC – originally inspired by Osama Ben Laden and designed,...

Here is the latest example (emphasis is in original):

The senseless slaughter last week of ten aid workers in northeastern Afghanistan has renewed the long-running debate about whether those tending to the world’s poorest and most forgotten people should resort to working under military protection. According to Die Zeit columnist Hauke Friederichs, this knee-jerk reaction from policymakers would only further endanger aid workers, whose efforts depend on...

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Ross Douthat has an amazingly dumb piece in his New York Times column space today about why all the usual arguments against same-sex marriage are wrong but it shouldn’t be allowed anyway. TBogg has the shorter version.  Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald have the best substantive responses (Andrew’s is more personal and reflective; Glenn’s is the legal analysis of Douthat’s argument)....

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Andrew McCarthy thinks he knows what Americans think — about everything, really, but in this particular case, about Muslims and the Ground Zero mosque:

There is no way I can improve on Ted Olson’s responses to Chris Wallace here, so I will not even try (via Think Progress):

Despite the fact that a NATO loss in Afghanistan would also spell disaster for Russia, there is always an element of schadenfreude - taking pleasure in the pain of others – in Russian coverage of the war. In that respect, this article from Russia’s Izvestia - the one time mouthpiece of Soviet communism – is a classic example. Are Westerner’s on too much of a high moral horse when it...

Flag-Raising Robester by Will Durst Just when you thought we were settling in for another typical, slow August news month, along comes Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker to overturn California’s Proposition 8. The one that banned same-sex marriages. Did you get that? He overturned the ban. Loosed the bonds. Broke the chains. Raised a rainbow flag. And reopened a can of worms the size of the Louisiana...

The above photograph of Aisha is by South African photographer Jodi Bieber for Time. Unusual Choice for Magazine Cover: A Reality Hard to Face/ Speaking to Children About The Cover This week, Time magazine’s managing editor Richard Stengel, blew out all stops for usual old school magazine propriety, and published a magazine cover that, when I saw it at the grocery store last night, I also saw a mother...

You cannot make this stuff up, and you cannot, ever, go wrong predicting that Israel will do something even more stupid and self-destructive than it did the last time it did something stupid and self-destructive:

I have had mixed feelings about the question of whether to build a mosque and community center 2 miles from Ground Zero, which is the major reason I’ve been mostly silent about it. But the myth makers and apologists for radical Islam who feel no compunction in smearing all opponents of the mosque as bigots and haters have changed my mind. The constant appeal directed to the media and ordinary Americans...

Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Fareed Zakaria, the high profile, high quality Newsweek staffer who is also a rising star as a CNN host, has returned an award he received from the Anti-Defamation League to the ADL due to the group’s stand opposing a mosque two blocks away from 9/11′s Ground Zero. The Huffington Post reports: Newsweek writer and CNN host Fareed Zakaria has returned an award he received in 2005 from the Anti-Defamation...

Continuing with our tour of what the rest of the world thinks of President Obama’s declaration of an end to U.S. combat operations in Iraq, this editorial from Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter has one very succinct message for the United States and any nation with similar intentions: learn the limits of military power. The Dagens Nyheter editorial says in part: … the achievements are meager. Few neighboring...

The controversy over a mosque in NYC two blocks from 911′s Ground Zero continues to boil — heated up by both genuine issues on each side of the argument and also by those who are transparently pressing hot buttons to get TV ratings or mid-term election votes. One of the many issues at play is the issue of religious freedom. And yesterday a group of rabbis rallied in support of the mosque: Rabbis...

One of the stories we posted today at Worldmeets.US is quite a fascinating interview with the man who was perhaps Saddam Hussein’s closest aide, Tariq Aziz. Iraq’s former foreign minister and chief spokesman, in his first interview since Baghdad fell, explains to Britain’s Guardian the conduct of his government before both Gulf Wars, why Iraq pretended to have weapons of mass destruction,...

The other day on Governor’s Island, just off Manhattan, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, responding to the controversy surrounding the planned Islamic community center near Ground Zero, a overheated controversy drummed up by conservatives, most of whom are not New Yorkers and yet who want to tell New York what to do (e.g., Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich), gave what I can only describe as a truly brilliant...

So is it time for critics of the Iraq War to eat a little crow? According to this editorial from Denmark’s leading newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, Iraq is far better off today – despite Bush’s motives for the war and the massive civilian deaths – than it would have been with Saddam Hussein at the helm in Baghdad. And most controversially, it compliments the U.S.-led coalition for avoiding...