Free Republic

If he had it to do over again, the Imam behind the "Ground Zero mosque" would have ditched the plan. "I would never have done it," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf told Christiane Amanpour on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, when asked if he would have proposed it knowing the controversy it would spark. "I'm a man of peace," he said. "The whole objective of peace work is not to do something that would provoke controversy."

Like many a San Franciscan, I've had a long love affair with that great urban metropolis on the other side of the country, New York City. Whether transplanted New Yorkers or members of the bicoastal set, more than a few locals are connected to their East Coast counterparts. In my own case, friends and colleagues have kept me visiting New York City regularly since I was a child. My last visit took place earlier this month, on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It seemed a fitting time to check in. The timing held a strictly...