Quote by TriSec:

I would disagree, but let me ask this: Did the center actually get the permit? Do they have the financing, contractors lined up, and are ready to break ground?



If they're ready to go, and all this rhetoric is preventing them from starting, then this is all smoke and noise.



But if the permit is held up, then this would be on religious grounds and should be a constitutional offense, no?

]The Point of No Return



BY JEFFREY GOLDBERG



For the Obama administration, the prospect of a nuclearized Iran is dismal to contemplate— it would create major new national-security challenges and crush the president’s dream of ending nuclear proliferation. But the view from Jerusalem is still more dire: a nuclearized Iran represents, among other things, a threat to Israel’s very existence. In the gap between Washington’s and Jerusalem’s views of Iran lies the question: who, if anyone, will stop Iran before it goes nuclear, and how? As Washington and Jerusalem study each other intensely, here’s an inside look at the strategic calculations on both sides—and at how, if things remain on the current course, an Israeli air strike will unfold.





IT IS POSSIBLE that at some point in the next 12 months, the imposition of devastating economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran will persuade its leaders to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is also possible that Iran’s reform-minded Green Movement will somehow replace the mullah-led regime, or at least discover the means to temper the regime’s ideological extremism. It is possible, as well, that “foiling operations” conducted by the intelligence agencies of Israel, the United States, Great Britain, and other Western powers—programs designed to subvert the Iranian nuclear effort through sabotage and, on occasion, the carefully engineered disappearances of nuclear scientists—will have hindered Iran’s progress in some significant way. It is also possible that President Obama, who has said on more than a few occasions that he finds the prospect of a nuclear Iran “unacceptable,” will order a military strike against the country’s main weapons and uranium-enrichment facilities.



But none of these things—least of all the notion that Barack Obama, for whom initiating new wars in the Middle East is not a foreign-policy goal, will soon order the American military into action against Iran—seems, at this moment, terribly likely. What is more likely, then, is that one day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran—possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq’s airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft. (It’s so crowded, in fact, that the United States Central Command, whose area of responsibility is the greater Middle East, has already asked the Pentagon what to do should Israeli aircraft invade its airspace. According to multiple sources, the answer came back: do not shoot them down.)



In these conversations, which will be fraught, the Israelis will tell their American counterparts that they are taking this drastic step because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people. The Israelis will also state that they believe they have a reasonable chance of delaying the Iranian nuclear program for at least three to five years. They will tell their American colleagues that Israel was left with no choice. They will not be asking for permission, because it will be too late to ask for permission.

Quote by Scoopster:

Whoa! Our old friend Lizz is gonna be in Providence next week!



I'm so going..

Quote by velveeta jones:

Being Republican means never having to say you're sorry.



That, and that killing people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong, means "Pro-Life".

Quote by velveeta jones:

Who here has Paypal? Why would I want it? (Other, than someone wants to buy something I'm selling and he lives 3 states away).

Quote by Will in Chicago:

Sorry about the double posting.

Quote by Mondobubba:

Liv and I both posted this to the Facebook last night, but it might have gotten lost in the white noise. Poor Sarah Palin can't draw 3000 people at 50 bucks a head. Pitty! Party of one?

Quote by Raine:

R'uh oh. In direct reference to a story in today's blog... International Burn A Koran Day party... The Pastor may have been arrested on August 4th for Child Porn.



Still looking for another source.

Quote by Mondobubba:

Tri, I am watching the greatest av-dork/space movie of the last 30 years. The Right Stuff.