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Imam Behind Park51 Ignores Low-Income Tenants Pleas, They SayThe Muslim imam who plans to build a controversial Islamic center near Ground Zero should first take on a smaller project, like ridding his New Jersey apartment buildings of rats and bedbugs, angry tenants told ABCNews.com. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf owns buildings across the Hudson River in several New Jersey cities, including Union City, North Bergen and Palisades Park, which he reportedly renovated with tax dollars. Residents, many of whom are immigrants and most of whom are working-class Hispanic Catholics, say they have complained about unsanitary conditions for years. The imam, however,...

He's the religious leader of the planned, controversial Ground Zero mosque -- but across the Hudson, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is known as an alleged slumlord. At buildings in Union City and Palisades Park, where Rauf reportedly got tax dollars to renovate low-income apartments, tenants yesterday said their gripes about their lousy housing conditions have been ignored. "Why doesn't he help the tenants he has before he builds a new place, claiming he wants to help people?" said a disgusted Jamie Barillas, who lives in a Rauf-owned apartment at 2206 Central Ave. in Union City... Tenant Vilma Then chided Rauf...

The politically correct stupidity of the Left truly knows no bounds. Here is video of Democrat National Committee Chair Tim Kaine telling Andrea Mitchell that if it was a “synagogue or church” being build near Ground Zero, there would be no reaction. Kaine then righteously said no controversy can be made with Islam. He was reacting to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s opposition to the Mosque at Ground Zero. Uh, Tim, you missed one tiny detail: The September 11 attacks were not committed in the name of Christianity or Judaism! They were committed by Islamic Jihadists who were expressly...

Should Muslims be allowed to build a mosque at Ground Zero? Merely posing the question is an act of deliberate distortion. As its defenders point out, the Community Center at Park51 will occupy not a solitary inch of the 16-block site on which the Twin Towers stood. Once built, the center will indeed house a mosque, "open and accessible to all" — but also a swimming pool, basketball court, auditorium, library, day care, restaurant and cooking school. The center is being built by a private organization on land it legally owns. Twenty-nine out of 30 Lower Manhattan community board members...

(BUFFALO, NY) – Buffalo Developer and lawyer Carl Paladino said today that he would use the powers of eminent domain to stop a mosque from being constructed near the Ground Zero site in New York City. “As Governor I will use the power of eminent domain to stop this mosque and make the site a war memorial instead of a monument to those who attacked our country,” Paladino said in a thirty second radio spot playing statewide beginning Wednesday evening. A successful lawyer and developer who built and manages a half billion dollar commercial real estate portfolio, Paladino scoffed at...

Here is video of Charles Krauthammer last night saying that Barack Obama, as President, should have appealed to Muslims not to build the Ground Zero Mosque. Krauthammer said that rather than endorsing the mosque, Obama should have told his Muslim audience that, “you ought to consider the decency and propriety of establishing a house of worship dedicated to Islam at a spot where people were murdered in the name of Islam.”As usual, Krauthammer says it about as well as it can be said.

IT’S AMERICA’S TURN TO BE OFFENDED We are told that the world is offended because of America. We have a president who has travelled around the world apologizing for America. Now at an Islamic dinner held at the White House celebrating the Muslim holiday of Ramadan the president openly hailed the building of a Mosque at ground zero despite the affront that such a Mosque would be to the American people. However, let it be known from this day forth that offense runs both ways. Just as the world can be offended because of America, America can be offended because...

Former White House communications director director Anita Dunn on Tuesday launched a furious attack against Republicans who have criticized President Obama’s remarks on the Ground Zero mosque, labeling the GOP as the party of intolerance. “The Republican party as solidifying its reputation for intolerance in this year, for almost any kind of difference in American society, is going down a very dangerous long term road,” Dunn said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “They might see some short term things although I think the American people are better than that,” she said. Coming from Dunn — who is no longer works for...

Americans are aghast that the president approves of the construction of a Victory Mosque by a pro-terrorism imam six hundred feet from Ground Zero. Revolting, yes. Shocking, no. One thing we know about Barack Obama is that he is committed to ruling in direct opposition to three-fourths of the American people on all core issues. Reread his contemptible speech in Cairo, in which the president spouted flagrant falsehoods about the charms of Islam, while berating the United States for being a bit churlish about radical Muslim ideology after 9/11. Obama’s boss, George Soros, has always thought we made too much...

Yes, Republicans, you can take advantage of this heated circumstance, backed by the families of the 9/11 victims, in their most emotional return to the public stage since 2001. But please don't do it. There are a handful of good reasons to oppose allowing the Islamic center to be built so close to Ground Zero, particularly the family opposition and the availability of other, less raw locations. But what is happening now — the misinformation about the center and its supporters; the open declarations of war on Islam on talk radio, the Internet and other forums; the painful divisions propelled...

When people seek to build a mosque near Ground Zero, the consensus among MSNBC liberals seems to be that their exercise of First Amendment rights to freedom of religion cannot be questioned. But it was a different story at MSNBC when, hours before and blocks away from where Pres. Obama was scheduled to speak, a man exercised his Second Amendment right to bear arms. Readers will recall the case of William Kostric. He was the New Hampshire man who was part of a protest group in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in August 2009 when Pres. Obama came to town for a...

NEW YORK -- A Hamas leader says Muslims "have to build" a mosque near ground zero. Mahmoud al-Zahar said Muslims "have to build everywhere" so that followers can pray, just like Christians and Jews build their places of worship. Al-Zahar spoke Sunday on "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on WABC-AM. He is a co-founder of Hamas and its chief on the Gaza Strip.

In the end, John Edwards was right. There are two Americas, though not based on Mr. Edward’s fairy tale of GOP rich and liberal poor. Those divisions of course exist, but the richest among us tend to belong to Mr. Edwards own party. The real dividing line in this country is: those that are for an Islamic Mosque and cultural center in the shadow of Ground Zero, and those that are against it. All polls show that the majority of this country falls into the latter category. Not surprisingly, President-out-of-touch Obama is for the mosque. From health care, to economic...

President Obama, with his back-to-back statements on the proposed mosque at Ground Zero, has managed to get himself in a position where Sarah Palin has both the high ground and the practical route to progress. At the Iftar dinner at the White House, the president endorsed the constitutional rights of all religions in America to build houses of worship where they want to on private property. He spoke with his trademark eloquence, but he was off the point. So, as he toured the Gulf Coast, he took a powder, explaining that he was not commenting on what he called “the...

From the beginning, there has been speculation that Barack Obama has been an apologist for the Islamic world. His campaign rhetoric during the 2008 presidential campaign in which he indicated that he would sit down with leaders of Islamic nations such as Iran without precondition drew the ire of many who viewed him as soft on the war on terror. Then, once in office, the dynamics of our battle with the forces of Islamic extremism took an even darker turn when the terms used to describe the conflict were changed. No longer were we fighting a war on terror. We...

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the Democratic congressman who represents ground zero in New York, vigorously defended a group’s right to build a mosque near what was once the World Trade Center. “There’s no way for government to block this,” the liberal congressman said on CNN’s “State of the Union," reiterating a point he made in a statement on Saturday. Asked about polling that shows bipartisan opposition to the project, Nadler said public opinion shouldn’t matter and stressed his fundamental belief that government has no right or business to comment one way or another on an issue of this sort. “We do...

John Boehner, the Ohio Republican who is the House minority leader, said: ”The decision to build this mosque so close to the site of ground zero is deeply troubling, as is the president’s decision to endorse it.” “The American people certainly don’t support it,” Mr. Boehner said. Representative Peter King, a New York Republican, said that while the Muslim community has the right to build the mosque, doing so needlessly offends too many people. “President Obama is wrong,” Mr. King said. “It is insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of ground zero....