Free Republic

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah) this week became one of the most prominent members of his party to voice his support for the Lower Manhattan mosque. In a local television interview over the weekend, Hatch said developers have the right to build the proposed Park51 Islamic center, which includes a mosque, two blocks from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "If the Muslims own that property — that private property and they want to build a Mosque there, they should have the right to do so," said Hatch, who is a Mormon. "The only question is, are they being...

Last night something happened we were deeply hoping for, but never thought — not in a million years — the current “president” would be stupid enough to do. We knew he could never resist supporting the Ground Zero Victory Mosque when asked about it directly, but we assumed reporters would be smart enough to never ask him a question that would open a window for him to let more of his anti-American, West-hating true nature shine through. So, the fact that the current “president”, and leader of the Democrat Party, has come out in favor of building a symbol of...

It was something he certainly didn't have to do. But he did it anyway. President Obama stepped into the fray of the single most divisive issue pertaining to terrorism, healing of hurt, religious disagreement, civil liberties, political fracturing, racism, and national security all in one step.

By charging headlong into the ferocious controversy over the plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero, President Barack Obama may have further damaged Democratic Party prospects in the upcoming mid-term elections. For while his return to the soaring rhetoric that won him the White House in the first place will be popular with hard-core liberal supporters, it is unlikely to capture the hearts of middle-America this year. In 2008 Mr Obama was a largely unknown quantity running on the strength of untried ideas and a ringing call for moral superiority. But now all of that has changed. According to...

President Barack Obama, speaking last night at the White House’s iftar dinner marking Ramadan, defended plans to build a mosque and Islamic community center near Ground Zero. The nation’s commitment to religious freedom he said, “must be unshakable.” “I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground,” he said. As WSJ reporters Devlin Barrett and Jonathan Weisman noted, the project “has generated opposition from a host of prominent Republicans, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Resistance to other mosque-building plans has sprouted around the country, but the symbolism...

Today, Tim Brown of theBravest.com spoke with Jed Babbin filling in on the Tom Marr Show about the plan to construct a Ground Zero mosque and our efforts to stop it. (Listen to previous interviews in our Audio Archive)

Mayor Bloomberg's popularity rating has dropped to its lowest level in five years, in part because of his ardent defense of a proposed mosque several blocks from Ground Zero, according to a poll released yesterday. New Yorkers' approval of their third-term mayor (pictured) dipped to 49 percent, down from 56 percent in April, as 53 percent of those surveyed said they disagree with his position on the mosque, according to the Marist survey. "The mosque is not doing him any good . . . He's certainly on the wrong side of public opinion on that in the city," said pollster...

A new poll finds that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s approval rating has dipped below 50 percent for the first time in five years. The Marist College survey was released Tuesday. It found that 49 percent of registered New York City voters think the billionaire mayor is doing either an excellent or good job. The poll said 33 percent rate him as doing a fair job, 16 percent said poor and 2 percent weren’t sure. The last time Marist asked this question, in April, 56 percent of voters rated him excellent or good.

State Department officials on Monday confirmed Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque, will soon be going on a trip of the Middle East and the U.S. government will be picking up the tab. The planned construction of a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City has set off a contentious national debate over religious freedom in the U.S., drawing impassioned opposition from some families of 9/11 victims. Rauf has emerged as a controversial figure because of his refusal to acknowledge Hamas as a terrorist organization, which is how the U.S. government classifies the group....

America is surrendering in the war against radical Islam. This is the real meaning behind the decision to build a 13-story mosque and Muslim cultural center 600 feet from the site of ground zero...Most New Yorkers and Americans do not want this mosque erected: It will be a symbolic monument to the triumph of Islamism in the United States... The Sept. 11 attacks were committed by Muslim extremists in the name of holy war against the West. They used the Koran and Islamic principles to justify their actions. Their goal was to bring jihad to America, unleashing a clash of...

The “Ground Zero” Mosque project should not go forward and let’s hope that Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf that is behind this $100 million project gets this message and backs off. But given what he is hearing from the liberals in New York, including the city’s Mayor, the congressman in whose district Ground Zero sits, and the New York Times, it’s hard to be optimistic that he will change his mind. Opposition to the Mosque is being portrayed, as the New York Times editorial page put it, as abandoning “the principles of freedom and tolerance.” But the Times makes its own...