Free Republic

March 16, 2006 -- OSAMA bin Laden must be laughing in his cave. Just when we should be looking forward to spring, the city is instead being drenched in a mud bath between Larry Silverstein and the unholy trinity of Gov. Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg and the Port Authority, over issues that ought to have been worked out four years ago. If Silverstein really doesn't have the dough to build all five office towers, as his foes claim, and if he's going to default and leave us in the lurch, why did it take until now to figure that out?

In the days following the announcement that the ill-fated Freedom Tower was being scrapped due to security reasons, advocates for a taller and stronger twin towers suddenly began to see faint streams of light in a dark, three-and-a-half year old tunnel to nowhere. Believing that perhaps the fickle finger of fate had at last emerged to leave its print upon Ground Zero, notables such as the great New York Post columnist Nicole Gelinas, National Review’s Deroy Murdock (both of whom have long supported the rebuilding of the towers), and the maker of apprentices himself, Donald Trump, were among many who...