President Obama hosts an iftar dinner, the meal that breaks the dawn-to-dusk fast for Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan, in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, Friday, Aug. 13, 2010. (AP)

Some victims’ advocates and Republicans have strongly condemned Obama’s support for the mosque, which would be part of a $100 million Islamic community center two blocks from where nearly 3,000 people perished when hijacked jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

“Barack Obama has abandoned America at the place where America’s heart was broken nine years ago, and where her true values were on display for all to see,” said Debra Burlingame, a spokeswoman for some Sept. 11 victims’ families and the sister of one of the pilots killed in the attacks.

Building the mosque at ground zero, she said, “is a deliberately provocative act that will precipitate more bloodshed in the name of Allah.”

Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son was killed at the World Trade Center, said the president had failed to understand the issue. “As an Obama supporter, I really feel that he’s lost sight of the germane issue, which is not about freedom of religion,” she said. “It’s about a gross lack of sensitivity to the 9/11 families and to the people who were lost.”

President Barack Obama has expressed his support for the construction of a Muslim Community Center and Mosque near the World Trade Center site in downtown Manhattan, as many protest the plan, saying it is wrong to build a mosque so close to the site of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said the president is “wrong.”

“It is insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of ground zero,” he said in a written statement.

“While the Muslim community has the right to build the mosque, they are abusing that right by needlessly offending so many people who have suffered so much,” he said. “The right and moral thing for President Obama to have done was to urge Muslim leaders to respect the families of those who died and move their mosque away from ground zero. Unfortunately, the president caved into political correctness.”

Entering the highly charged election-year debate, Obama surely knew that his words would not only make headlines in the U.S. but be heard by Muslims worldwide. The president has made it a point to reach out to the global Muslim community, and the over 100 guests at Friday’s dinner in the State Dining Room included ambassadors and officials from numerous nations where Islam is observed, including Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.

While his pronouncement concerning the mosque might find favor in the Muslim world, Obama’s stance runs counter to the opinions of the majority of Americans, according to polls. A CNN/Opinion Research poll released this week found that nearly 70 percent of Americans opposed the mosque plan while just 29 percent approved. A number of Democratic politicians have shied away from the controversy.

Opponents, including some Sept. 11 victims’ relatives, see the prospect of a mosque so near the destroyed trade center as an insult to the memory of those killed by Islamic terrorists in the 2001 attacks.

Former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania told Fox News that Obama seems to misunderstand that Islam is not just a religion, but also a political doctrine. He also said the mosque is being run by a man who accused the U.S. of being an accomplice in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Santorum compared the ground zero mosque to a minister who wants to builds a church near the location where the Rev. Martin Luther King was killed but preaches racial separation and the notion that King brought his death upon himself.

“I don’t think Barack Obama would say, ‘Well we have religious tolerance, we’re going to allow them to do that,’” he said. “That is the wrong way to look at this. This is not whether it’s a legal right to do it. People have legal rights to do a lot of things in this country.”

“We have the will of the American public,” he said, noting the polls show most oppose the mosque. The imam is “ignoring the will of the American public, as by the way, Barack Obama is by siding with him.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Repost By Ross Colvin and Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON | Sat Aug 14, 2010 8:17am EDT
(Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Friday backed construction of a proposed mosque and Muslim cultural center near the site of the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York — a project opposed by U.S. conservatives and many New Yorkers.

Obama approved defining 9/11 victims

“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances,” he said, weighing in for the first time in a national debate that has grown increasingly heated in recent weeks.

Earlier this month a New York city agency cleared the way for construction of the community center, which will include a prayer room, two blocks from the site of the September 11 attacks, popularly known as “Ground Zero.”

“This is America and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable,” said Obama, who has made improving ties between the United States and the Muslim world a cornerstone of his foreign policy.

Obama was speaking during an Iftar dinner he hosted at the White House. Iftar is the evening meal when Muslims break their daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

About 2,750 people were killed in the September 11 attacks, when al Qaeda hijackers crashed two passenger planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The attacks deeply traumatized Americans and sparked the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the Bush administration’s “war on terror.”

Many families of those killed in the attacks have mounted an emotional campaign to block the community center, calling it provocative and a betrayal of the memory of the victims.

Conservative politicians such as former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, a Republican former Speaker of the House of Representatives, also have called for the project to be scrapped.

Mark Williams, a spokesman for the conservative Tea Party political movement, said the center would be used for “terrorists to worship their monkey god.”

OBAMA WEIGHS IN

In his remarks on Friday, Obama preached the need for religious tolerance and noted that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution had established the freedom of religion, “and that right has been upheld ever since.”

The president also stressed that al Qaeda was not synonymous with Islam.

“Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam — it is a gross distortion of Islam,” he said. “These are not religious leaders — these are terrorists who murder innocent men, women and children.”

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has firmly supported the community center project as have many religious organizations in the city. However, 53 percent of New Yorkers oppose it, according to a Marist Poll this week.

The Cordoba House community center is the brainchild of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who told Reuters in an interview last month that he had modeled it on the Young Men’s Christian Association.

Now simply called the Y, YMCA facilities across the United States offer exercise classes, education and community activities.

The city agency’s August 3 ruling is expected to clear the way for construction of Cordoba House, which will include a 500-seat auditorium, art exhibition spaces and a swimming pool as part of a 13-story complex.

Since coming into office, Obama, a Democrat, has worked to reach out to Muslims, many of whom felt targeted by the “war on terror” and by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In a speech in Cairo in June 2009, Obama called for a “new beginning” in ties between the United States and Muslims, saying extremists had exploited tensions between Muslims and the West and that Islam was not part of the problem.

(Writing by Jeff Mason and Ross Colvin, additional reporting by Emma Ashburn, editing by Bill Trott)

The U.S. Defense Department is unable to properly account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil money tapped by the U.S. for rebuilding the war ravaged nation, according to an audit released Tuesday.

The report by the U.S. Special Investigator for Iraq Reconstruction offers a compelling look at continued laxness in how such funds were being spent in a country where people complain basic services like electricity and clean water are sharply lacking seven years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

The audit found that shoddy record keeping by the Defense Department left the Pentagon unable to fully account for $8.7 billion it withdrew between 2004 and 2007 from a special fund set up by the U.N. Security Council. Of that amount, Pentagon “could not provide documentation to substantiate how it spent $2.6 billion.”

The funds are separate from the $53 billion allocated by Congress for rebuilding Iraq.

The report comes at a critical time for Iraq, which four months after inconclusive elections squabbling political factions have still not agreed on a new government.

Despite security gains made since 2008, bombings remain near a daily occurrence that compound the frustrations and fears of Iraqis increasingly weary of the political crisis — one many say reflects how the country’s politicians are more interested in their own interests than those of the nation.

The continuing impasse was highlighted on Tuesday when Iraqi lawmakers gathered for the second time this month only to indefinitely postpone the parliamentary session because there was still no decision on the new government.

Acting speaker Fouad Massoum told reporters that the postponement was designed to give the political blocs more time to discuss contentious issues and agree on the distribution of positions in the new government.

“With every delay, the suffering of the Iraqi people and security risks are increasing,” lawmaker Salman al-Jumaili told reporters, criticizing the move.

The U.S. audit is unlikely to do anything but further stoke that frustration felt by Iraqis who continue to suffer from poor infrastructure despite the billions spent.

The audit cited a number of factors behind the inability to account for most of the money withdrawn by the Pentagon from the Development Fund for Iraq.

It said most of the Defense Department organizations that received DFI money failed to set up Treasury Department accounts, as required.

In addition, it said no Defense Department organization was designated as the main body to oversee how the funds were accounted for or spent.

“The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss,” the report said.

Calls to Iraqi officials for comment went unanswered.

The Defense Department, in responses attached to the audit, said it agreed with the recommendations laid out in the report about establishing better guidelines for monitoring such funds, including appointing an organization to be responsible for overseeing such funds mostly likely by November.

The audit found that the U.S. continues to hold about $34.3 million of the money even though it was required to return it to the Iraqi government.

The audit did not indicate that investigators believed there were any instances of fraud involved in the spending of these funds.

The DFI includes revenues from Iraq’s oil and gas exports, as well as frozen Iraqi assets and surplus funds from the now-defunct, Saddam Hussein-era oil-for-food program.

With the establishment of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq shortly after the start of the U.S. invasion in 2003 until mid-2004, about $20 billion was placed into the account.

The Iraqi government had agreed to allow the U.S. continued access to the funds after the CPA was dissolved in 2004, but it revoked that authority in December 2007.

In other developments, seven people were killed in a series of bombings and apparent assassinations in Baghdad and Mosul, a northern city where al-Qaida is believed to still have a strong presence. Among those killed were two women shot dead in their home by gunmen and a Baghdad electricity official who died of wounds sustained after a morning roadside bombing.

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This probably isn’t the first time you’ve heard someone ask if Jeb Bush is going to run for president. It won’t be the last.

Political dynasties don’t just die off, especially when they control the presidency for 12 of 22 years and have in their depth chart the extremely popular former governor of a key swing state.

Jeb Bush thinking about running for POTUS?

Some political observers say by all rights, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush should be running for president. He has strong conservative credentials, an impeccable political pedigree, can appeal to the all-important Hispanic population, and could do well in his home state, which is populous, up for grabs, and often decides general elections.

But if you go to his website, jeb.org, there is a blank page. Is it waiting to be filled with a platform? Or is it left over from older ambitions?

No doubt the Bush brand is damaged. When Jeb’s brother George W. left office in 2009, fewer than three in ten Americans approved of his presidency.

But there is hope among Republicans that stigma is beginning to fade.

“I think a lot of people are looking back with a little — with more fondness on President Bush’s administration, and I think history will treat him well,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex, who is in charge of getting Republicans elected to the Senate in 2010, told C-Span this week.

Many conservatives have long hoped Jeb Bush would play a bigger national role, but he has kept a low profile since leaving the Florida governor” />#8217;s mansion in 2007.

The question that lingers on many Republican lips when asked about whether he should join the fray and run for President is this: “Is it too soon?”

The answers vary.

“Given the way the Obama administration is going, I think it’s not too soon,” said one Florida Republican who asked not be identified so as not to appear to be taking sides.

“It’s just too soon,” said one Washington Republican who requested anonymity for the same reason.

Jeb Bush has been out of office for two years and owns a consulting business, which doesn’t appear to have any website. He is a senior advisor to Barclay’s Capitol and operates two foundations that focus on his favorite policy issue – education. Read about those here and here.

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OMG!!

Scary stuff

President Obama appeared this morning, the 87^th day of the Gulf oil spill, to discuss the spill and BP’s relief efforts. According to the Heritage Foundation, today was


the first time since June 22 that Obama had publicly acknowledged the spill’s existence. If you’re keeping score, that’s 24 days of publicly ignoring the spill’s existence, beginning 7 days after Obama used his first Oval Office address to tell us all what a tragedy this disaster was, and how its occurrence somehow meant that we needed to pay his government significantly more in taxes.

I guess he was so busy in the intervening 24 days — nearly a month — looking for an “ass to kick,” he couldn’t find the time to mention the ongoing spill. Or maybe he was just too busy playing the latest of the 10 rounds of golf he’s enjoyed since the April 20 Deepwater Horizon disaster — nearly half the number of rounds his predecessor, George W. Bush, played in his entire 8 year tenure. 


If Nero earned permanent notoriety for fiddling while his Empire’s capital city burned, what should Obama face after playing round after round of golf while the greatest man-made environmental disaster in human history was going on?

Obama’s decision to finally acknowledge, for the first time in nearly a month, that oil is still spewing into the Gulf is a very good sign for BP’s current relief effort. His 24 days of silence on the topic suggest that there’s no way Obama would be talking oil spill now if he hadn’t been assured that there was some major ongoing, or imminent, improvement in the situation he could safely take credit for.

And speaking of energy taxes and dependence, here’s something worth noting: even the backward (to say the least) Islamic “Republic” of Iran is taking significant steps to reduce its dependence on foreign fuel sources, upping its refining capacity in hopes of cutting gasoline imports by up to 75% in the next five years. Score one for the Persian state, which has shown itself, in at least one area, to be more truly “progressive” than the rigid ideologues currently attempting to lead America while permanently sojourning in energy independence fantasyland.

A real - and “comprehensive,” to use a pet liberal term in its correct setting - solution to America’s imported energy problem can be found in more efficient use of our domestic fossil fuel sources, and in expanding our use of nuclear energy. However, rather than seeking to implement actual solutions to our energy problem, the American left remains obsessed with their radical - and incredibly unrealistic ideas of what so-called “clean energy” should be. This, unfortunately, will do nothing but further increase our dependence on foreign energy sources, while further driving down an already failing Obama economy.

Speaking of backward nations, the world’s largest gathering of them — the United Nations — finally came to a decision on what action to take with regard to North Korea’s sinking of the South Korean Navy ship Cheonan, which resulted in the deaths of 46 ROK sailors.  Unsurprisingly, that decision was to condemn the act, but to make no mention whatsoever of the culprit. The Presidential Statement released by the UN Security Council paid lip service to South Korea’s claim of North Korean culpability, but then proceeded to “[take] note of the responses from other relevant parties, including from the DPRK, which has stated that it had nothing to do with the incident.”

The result, according to the statement, was that “the Security Council condemns the attack which led to the sinking of the Cheonan” — whoever the unnamed culprit might be.  Unsurprisingly, the former community organizer’s administration declared this milquetoast condemnation of an act with no mention of its culprit to be a strong, bold move against the out of control regime in Pyongyang.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the UNSCR’s statement “sends a clear message that such irresponsible and provocative behavior … will not be tolerated.”  North Korea, on the other hand, declared the non-condemnation condemnation a “great diplomatic victory” for Pyongyang.

I’ll leave it to you to decide which party — Obama administration official Hillary Clinton, or the Pyongyang regime — hit closer to the actual truth with their post-Presidential Statement spin.

Via our own Dan McLaughlin, it looks like Mitt Romney is polling better with disaffected Obama voters than he is with Republicans.  This tells me two things about those respective groups of potential voters: (1) That the former hope-and-changers who are now disaffected Obama voters remain as gullible as ever, and (2) that Republican voters are more knowledgeable about their potential candidates in general, and the architect of the RomneyCare disaster in particular, than we often give them credit for.

I’ll look with interest for further degradation of Romney’s numbers among Republicans in the next week, now that an “adviser” of his has been reported as saying former Alaska Governor, and current Tea Party/activist Republican darling, Sarah Palin is “not a serious human being.”

If you need a crystal-clear sign of how radioactive Democrats have become during their period of governmental dominance under President Obama (D-IL), Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), look no further than South Carolina, where the idea of supporting the Democrat establishment candidate was so distasteful to voters that they nominated an unemployed veteran with a dishonorable military discharge who had no campaign apparatus, and no cash on hand other than a stack of unemployment checks (thanks, Democrats!) he saved up to afford the $10,440 qualifying fee.

The fact that Rep. Clyburn (D-SC) and his allies in the crumbling Democrat establishment have called Greene a “Republican plant” speaks to just how out of touch the Democrats in government really are with those they purport to represent. Expect a lot more of this kicking, screaming, and Obama-style reflexive finger-pointing this November, when the American people exercise their right and their desire to throw out the dictocrats who are currently piloting our ship of state into the rockiest shoreline they can find.

I’ve been skeptical of The Daily Caller — from its name, which sounds like the shady guy living up the street who your mom tell you to call “uncle,” to its overall usefulness as a news site — for quite some time now.  However, Tucker Carlson has truly hit one out of the park with his appropriation of http://keitholbermann.com, his personal utilization of the email address keith@keitholbermann.com, and his promise to hand out @keitholbermann.com email addresses to TDC readers.  The pleasure gained from watching militant leftists’ heads explode at this (here’s a sample) is only exceeded by the eminently gratifying experience of watching an arrogant windbag who makes his meager living calling out individuals as “The Worst Person in the World” on a nightly basis absolutely flip out over an enterprising commentator’s gall in poking some good-natured fun at him.

Way to go, Tucker!

Even The Politico has woken up to the fact that the Left’s New Great Communicator, Barry Obama, and his administration as a whole, have turned out “to be not especially good at politics or communications.” Add to that the fact that more people are realizing that, as NRO’s Andy McCarthy put it, “race obsession of the Obama administration is a sight to behold,” and the public perception woes of this administration may only increase in the near future.

I was at Turner Field last night for the Atlanta Braves’ 2-1 win over the Milwaukee Brewers.  Like a fair number of Braves fans this year, I watch the team as much to see rookie phenom Jason Heyward as anything else.  The young man — at 20 years old, he just barely qualifies as a “man” — is not only a phenomenally talented baseball player, but his striking level of humility, poise, and maturity sets him apart from his peers.  Compare this young man, who is the consummate team player and who goes about his business on the field and off with maturity and professionalism, to those in his age cohort who are (or in some cases were) playing college football up GA Highway 316 at my alma mater, the University of Georgia, and the difference between a young man raised to have humility, and those who have been raised to feel 100% entitled, could not be made more clear.

Is there a better metaphor for Barry Obama’s out-of-touch presidency than his statement this morning that he didn’t feel the record earthquake that shook DC this morning? Okay, okay — there are plenty of metaphors for Obama’s amazing lack of a connection with the American people, but this is a pretty good one.

In the interest of time, space, and your sanity, that’s it for now. I’ll be back next week with more food for thought.

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As reports are coming out that Pennsylvania is receiving $160 million from the Department of Health and Human Services to set up a new high-risk insurance pool program that will fund abortions, we are seeing, yet again, that the Obama Administration will say and do anything to pass their liberal agenda – ignoring public opinion along the way…

LIES: “You’ve heard that this is all going to mean government funding of abortion – not true. These are all fabrications.” - President Obama on August 19, 2009

D*MN LIES: “The executive order provides additional safeguards to ensure that the status quo is upheld and enforced, and that the health care legislation’s restrictions against the public funding of abortions cannot be circumvented.” — White House Statement on March 21, 2010

STATISTICS: 67 percent of Americans oppose funding abortions with public funds under the health care bill. — Quinnipiac University Poll, January 14, 2010

As pundits have commented in recent weeks, and many of us have realized, you need to watch what the President really does, not listen to what he says, as the two are often in vast contrast of one another. As you can read above, nowhere is this truer than on the issue of abortion.

Back in March, when the offer to sign an Executive Order was made, many pro-lifers questioned why the order was needed after President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Secretary Sebelius had been saying for months that no federal dollars would be used to fund abortions. On the day of the vote, I personally spoke on the House floor about how an Executive Order has no effect of law and cannot override the clear intent of a statute, as well as on how an Executive Order is only a piece of paper. Now that we know how little the President values his word and that he is comfortable violating an Executive Order, we are only left to wonder what other secrets are lurking for us in the dark.

Obamacare is a horrible law. The fact that hardworking taxpayers are now funding abortions – when many would rather use that money to provide for their families in an economy President Obama has only worsened – is an absolute outrage. The abortion funding being given to the state of Pennsylvania should be added to the already long list of why Obamacare must be repealed by Congress or overturned by the Supreme Court, whichever is quickest – and that’s no lie!

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