We'll see.

Thanks, Ginger!
-Alan

> In 1985, Barack Obama had just arrived in Chicago for his new job as a community organizer when he headed to Smitty’s Barbershop, a tiny storefront on the South Side. As Smitty cut his hair, Obama listened to the men in the shop talk politics and racial grievance. When the barber finished, he handed Obama a mirror and said, “Haircut’s ten dollars. What’s your name, anyway?”
> “Barack.”
> “Barack, huh,” Smitty responded. “You a Muslim?”
> “Grandfather was,” Obama said, according to his memoir Dreams From My Father.
> Smitty’s question, which Obama didn’t exactly answer, prefigured a controversy that continues to this day.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Obama-has-himself-to-blame-for-Mus...

This, of course, is only "prefiguring of a controversy" to people who are morons.

To bigotry no sanction
http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2010/07/to-bigotry-no-sanction.html

George Washington:

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

(via Instapaper)

> Yeah, I don't know either.

A reader writes to Talking Points Memo about the nontroversy over Muslim community centers]. The whole letter is very good. Here's a snip:

Following her logic (no small feat, I might add), do I now have the right to protest the construction of a new office building in Anchorage because it may house the offices of an oil company and might insult the people who suffered from the BP oil spill? Or can I have a say the next time some city in the "heartland" (because apparently that is the place that has veto power over land use in New York) decides to build more sprawl at the expense of more livable communities with mixed-use development, walkable streets, and public transportation? I think I should because it really "stabs me in the heart" when places do that.

This is a local issue, plain and simple. The people of New York, the ones actually attacked on 9/11 and who had to live through the aftermath, are the only ones who are effected by this and don't seem to have a problem with it, so no one else should. It is no one else's business. Sarah Palin and the "heartland" do not have permanent veto power over what gets built in Lower Manhattan. If they want a say over what happens there, my advice would be to move to New York. They might even learn something about the values of living in a multi-ethnic, multicultural community.