Posts Tagged ‘New York’

Obama endorses building of Islamic community center near Ground Zero

Evans Liberal Politics
August 14, 2010

 

Obama endorses building of Islamic
community center near Ground Zero

 

Obama endorses building of Cordoba House, The Raw Story, August 13, 2010, by Muriel Kane, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

UPDATED below:

According to prepared remarks released by the White House, President Obama will support the building of Cordoba House — the Islamic community center loosely described as a “Ground Zero mosque” — during a dinner tonight celebrating the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

patriotic image of Obama on the campaign trail

The event, known as an Iftar dinner, marks the breaking of the daytime fast that observant Muslims are required to perform during this month. The guest list includes Muslim diplomats and representatives of community groups, as well as both Muslim and non-Muslim members of the administration and Congress.

In his remarks, Obama is expected to tell his guests, “Here at the White House, we have a tradition of hosting iftars that goes back several years, just as we host Christmas parties, seders, and Diwali celebrations. These events celebrate the role of faith in the lives of the American people. They remind us of the basic truth that we are all children of God, and we all draw strength and a sense of purpose from our beliefs. These events are also an affirmation of who we are as Americans.”

Obama then goes on to address the current controversy, saying:

Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities – particularly in New York. Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan. The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country. The pain and suffering experienced by those who lost loved ones is unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.

But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. 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. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure. …

Spiritual Cinema Circle

In my inaugural address, I said that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth. That diversity can bring difficult debates. Indeed, past eras have seen controversies about the construction of synagogues or Catholic churches. But time and again, the American people have demonstrated that we can work through these issues, stay true to our core values, and emerge stronger for it. So it must be – and will be – today.

Tonight, we are reminded that Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity. And Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America. The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan—making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago.

A few days ago, Obama was being criticized for his reluctance to weigh in on the issue, with press secretary Robert Gibbs describing it as a local New York City matter. Adam Sorensen at Time, however, suggested that “maybe he’s passing on the Cordoba House debate because it’s just too hot an issue at a sensitive political moment. Afterall, Democrats are bracing for a rough November. Maybe he’s just hoping not to reignite that whole “Barack Hussein Obama is an Undercover Imam” thing. (Just in case: He’s not.) But maybe, just maybe, Obama is biding his time for the right moment.”

Now that the “right moment” has arrived, Greg Sargent at the Washington Post believes that Obama may have incited a battle with the right, writing, “The foes of the Islamic center have been trying to drag Obama into this debate, and some have urged Obama to avoid wading into it. But now he has, and crucially, he’s suggested that not standing up for the group’s right to build the Islamic center is, in essence, un-American. I look forward to the response from the project’s opponents.”

See Obama Strongly Backs Islam Center Near 9/11 Site, The New York Times, August 13, 2010, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg.

N.Y. Times Update: Obama Says Mosque Upholds Principle of Equal Treatment, The New York Times, August 14, 2010, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, excerpt quoted verbatim:

PANAMA CITY, Fla. — President Obama said on Saturday that in defending the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque near Ground Zero he “was not commenting” on “the wisdom” of that particular project, but rather trying to uphold the broader principle that government should treat “everyone equal, regardless” of religion.

Mr. Obama, who is visiting the Gulf Coast with his wife and younger daughter for a brief overnight stay, made his comments at the Coast Guard district station here. On Friday night, he used the White House iftar, a sunset dinner celebrating the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, to weigh in on the mosque controversy. In clarifying his remarks, Mr. Obama was apparently seeking to address criticism that he is using his presidential platform to promote a particular project that has aroused the ire of many New Yorkers. And on Saturday at least three prominent Republicans spoke out against Mr. Obama’s stance.

White House officials said earlier in the day that Mr. Obama was not trying to promote the project, but rather sought more broadly to make a statement about freedom of religion and American values. “In this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion,” Mr. Obama said at the Coast Guard station. “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.

“And I think it’s very important as difficult as some of these issues are that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about.”

At the dinner on Friday night, Mr. Obama had proclaimed that “as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.”

But the day after the dinner, John Boehner, the Ohio Republican who is the House minority leader, was among those who criticized the president.

See Obama narrows mosque defense, Politico, August 14, 2010, by Ben Smith, quoted verbatim:

Speaking to reporters today, President Obama drew a sharp line under his comments last night, insisting that his defense of the right to build a mosque does not mean he supports the project.

“I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding,” he said.

Obama’s new stance is logically consistent with his words last night, if a bit less “clarion,” as Mike Bloomberg called the first remarks. And there are certainly two possible stances here: Bloomberg’s, that the Cordoba project itself represents the best of America; and Obama’s, that the freedom of religion is an important American value.

Obama’s new remarks, literally speaking, re-open the question of which side he’s on. Most of the mosque’s foes recognize the legal right to build, and have asked the builders to reconsider.

But the clarification is, in political terms, puzzling. The signal Obama sent with his rhetoric last night wasn’t that he had chosen to make a trivial, legal point about the First Amendment. He chose to make headlines in support of the mosque project, and he won’t be able to walk them back now with this sprinkling of doubt. All he’ll do is frustrate some of the people who so eagerly welcomed his words yesterday as a return to form.

Comment by Paul Evans: Or else he was simply trying to blunt the rage of the 41 percent of the GOP who consider themselves birthers. Something like that. Obama makes perfect sense here, doesn’t he?

See
Marco Rubio, Charlie Crist Disagree Over Ground Zero Mosque
, Politics Daily, August 14, 2010, by Matt Lewis.

See Obama Speaks Out On Mosque Controversy: “Our Commitment To Religious Freedom Must Be Unshakeable”, Truthout, August 14, 2010, by Faiz Shakir: Oh Yeah Teabaggers, this means he’s Definitely a secret Muslim. Brilliant.

UPDATE from Twitter: See Obama ‘not commenting on wisdom’ of controversial Islamic center, CNN, August 14, 2010, by CNN Wire Staff.

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The “Shuttle” Court: The Kagan Nomination, Geographical Diversity, And The Tyranny of Small Decisions

Evans Liberal Politics
May 11, 2010

 

The “Shuttle” Court: The Kagan
Nomination, Geographical Diversity,
And The Tyranny of Small Decisions

 

The “Shuttle” Court: The Kagan Nomination, Geographical Diversity, And The Tyranny of Small Decisions, Washington Inside Out, May 10, 2010, by cincinnatusdc, photo adapted from Wikipedia, quoted verbatim:

I came across this marvelous take on Kagan and geographic diversity (or the lack thereof) on a special page on linking at The Volokh Conspiracy, with an invitation to cross-post, so here is something interesting from cincinnaticusdc:

Let us grant that Elena Kagan is well qualified by intellect, temperament, experience, and judicial philosophy to serve on the Supreme Court. By any fair application of confirmation precedent, she easily deserves to be confirmed.

detail of a Wikpedia photo of a meeting between Elena Kagan and Barack Obama at the White House

But her nomination continues a trend – the near elimination of the Court’s geographical diversity — that I fear will, over time, leave the Supreme Court more open to challenge when it makes decisions vindicating the rights of unpopular minorities. With the addition of soon-to-be-Justice Kagan, and the exception of Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court will consist entirely of justices who spent the vast bulk of their legal careers in the three metropolitan areas served by the US Air and Delta Shuttles: Washington, New York and Boston, with seven justices (all but Kennedy and Sotomayor) serving long stints in Washington government service, and a majority (Scalia, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Alito and Kagan) raised in or around New York City. This contrasts with the Warren Court, for example, which in its halcyon days included a former Governor of California (Earl Warren), a former Senator from Alabama (Hugo Black), an All-American from Colorado (Byron White), and the former Vice-Mayor of Cincinnati (Potter Stewart), just to name a few.

The continuing “Northeasternerification” of the Supreme Court clearly was not a conscious decision by President Obama or his predecessors. Instead, it is the result of what noted economist Alfred Kahn called “the tyranny of small decisions” in which a series of relatively small decisions (here individual nominations, in the case of Sotomayor and Kagan based on legitimate considerations and superb qualifications) collectively leads to a less-than-ideal result, a Supreme Court markedly lacking in geographical diversity.

My concern is that this lack of geographical diversity will be used by critics to attack Court decisions protecting individual rights and liberties. When the Supreme Court strikes down government action undertaken by duly elected officials – e.g., striking down a law than infringes on freedom of speech, banning official public school prayer, or preventing the Executive Branch from indefinitely detaining a terror suspect without trial – it is acting as a quintessentially anti-democratic, or countermajoritarian, institution. The public accepts unpopular decisions because of faith in the Constitution and in the legitimacy of the Court as an institution. It is this public faith in the Court that may be undermined to some degree by the Court’s lack of geographical diversity.

Suppose, for example, that the Olson/Boies challenge to the California anti-gay marriage initiative is successful and the initiative is struck down by the Supreme Court. It is all too likely that critics of such a decision would question why a Court consisting almost exclusively of Northeasterners should be permitted to impose their views (albeit constitutionally-determined) on the rest of the Nation.

It may be argued that because of modern transportation and technology, geographic diversity is less important than it used to be. But in an era of popular dissatisfaction with Washington and Wall Street, it would be a mistake to assume that geographic considerations are unimportant.

Indeed, expect Senate Republicans eager for political gain in the South and the West to make noise about the lack of geographic diversity in Kagan’s upcoming confirmation hearings. The Obama campaign was politically astute when they held the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver, the center of the increasingly purple Rocky Mountain West. For the Court’s sake, let us hope that this astuteness is brought to bear if and when President Obama gets to make a third Supreme Court nomination.

Watch Elena Kagan, Day 1: Right Wing Media Figures Make Smears, Media Matters for America on Evans Liberal Politics, May 11, 2010 – 1:49.

Watch Video: Biden – Kagan ‘Was Right’ To Ban Military Recruiters From Harvard Law School, Talking Points Memo on Evans Liberal Politics, May 11, 2010 – 1:24.

Read Elena Kagan is Obama’s Supreme Court Pick (Updated), Evans Liberal Politics, May 10, 2010.

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Unemployment Bill Held Up By GOP Foot Dragging

Evans Politics, November 9, 2009

 

Unemployment Bill Held Up
By GOP Foot Dragging (Video)

 

See Delay in unemployment benefits vote tied to GOP’s fight against ACORN, The Michigan Messenger, November 6, 2009, by David Weigel, quoted verbatim.

“WASHINGTON — This rundown of why a vote on unemployment insurance benefits was delayed by five weeks seems like a nadir in the War on ACORN. According to Ryan Grim at The Huffington Post, the GOP objected to an early vote because they ‘were trying to introduce unrelated amendments attacking ACORN and the financial-industry bailout, among other things.’

“There are two echoes here of the just-concluded elections. The first: Republicans out-and-out claimed that ACORN was on the ground in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, and though the group’s credibility has been seriously challenged in recent months, they deny having had any boots on the ground up there.

“The second: Many Democrats believe that failed Virginia gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds blundered in not making an issue out of Republican-led delays in unemployment benefit money, and Governor-elect Bob McDonnell’s role in this. Here are two examples of Democrats really ceding the narrative to aggressive and strategic conservatives.”

According to Maddow, because of the delay in the unemployment bill’s passage, 200,000 people have had their benefits run out.