The $26 Billion bailout
August 12, 2010

President Barack Obama signed into law a $26 billion plan that Democrats say is designed to help cash-strapped state governments preserve the jobs of thousands of teachers, police and firefighters.

Obama put his signature on the measure about two hours after the U.S. House approved the legislation 247-161 yesterday. The lawmakers returned to Washington for one day to act on the bill amid fears the U.S. economy is stalling before November's midterm elections. They headed back to the campaign trail after sending the plan to the president.

"We can't stand by and do nothing while pink slips are given to the men and women who educate our children or keep our communities safe," Obama said earlier yesterday in a White House Rose Garden appearance. He said the measure won't add to the deficit.

The bill cleared the Senate last week after two Republicans joined Democrats in breaking a filibuster.

Representatives Mike Castle of Delaware, who is running for the Senate, and Joseph Cao of New Orleans were the only Republicans to support the bill in the House. Three Democrats opposed the plan. Twenty-five lawmakers didn't vote.

The bill became the latest flashpoint in an election-year debate over jobs, the economy and the deficit. Republicans, who have attacked federal spending as one of their top campaign issues, called the legislation a costly bailout of government employees, a key Democratic constituency. Democrats, who have struggled to realize their jobs agenda, said the bill would keep teachers in the classroom and police on the beat while still cutting the deficit.

'Emergency Session'

"We are here today because the speaker of the House has declared this an emergency session," said Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican. "There is a national emergency: Apparently Congress has not spent enough money."

He added, "The American people are asking, 'What part of broke doesn't this Congress understand?'"

Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Republicans opposed the measure for political gain. "The Republicans have a two-step strategy: First of all, obstruct anything from getting better and then point out that things aren't getting any better," he said.

The bill is intended to help fill state budget gaps totaling $84 billion, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, triggered primarily by weak sales and declining income-tax revenue.

Balancing Budgets

Unlike the federal government, every state except Vermont is required to balance its budget, forcing spending cuts, tax increases or both -- actions that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said last week are contributing to the nation's sluggish recovery.

State and local governments shed 48,000 jobs last month, bringing this year's losses to about 170,000, according to the Labor Department. The bill would provide $16 billion to help cover states' Medicaid bills plus $10 billion for teachers.

Economist Mark Zandi, a former adviser to 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain, called the legislation "a very good idea," estimating it would save 150,000 jobs. It won't save thousands more people from receiving pink slips, said Zandi, who estimated states will still have to cut another quarter-million jobs to make their budget numbers work.

"Even with the $26 billion, they are going to be cutting into real bone," he said.

Corporate Tax Increase

The bill would be financed in part by a $10 billion tax increase on multinational corporations, which split lawmakers along party lines. Democrats said they are cracking down on the abuse of foreign tax credits intended to ensure companies aren't taxed by both the U.S. Treasury and foreign governments on earnings abroad. Republicans, along with trade groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, called the tax increase a jobs killer.

The measure would rescind funding for a renewable energy loan program and cut food stamps by $12 billion beginning in 2014, clauses that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she doesn't support and which lawmakers may revisit later.

"I hope we can make that up in another way," Pelosi said.

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The Working Class Hero
August 12, 2010

After leaving his lawyer's office the day after making bail, Steven Slater drove home to his modest beachfront house in Belle Harbor, Queens, Wednesday afternoon.

The JetBlue flight attendant told police that he deployed an emergency chute, slid down, and drove home after his flight arrived in New York. He apparently had a verbal altercation with a passenger.

Law enforcement sources have told Fox 5 News that investigators are set to interview another passenger who witnessed the dispute and whose account of what happened may be different than Slater's.

"Nice to be here," he said to reporters as he exited his Jeep Wrangler.

America's latest folk hero would only say that all the attention is a bit much. His live-in partner spoke for him: "We are beyond belief the support the people are giving us."

Slater had done what many would like to do: Tell their boss to take this job and "escape hatch it."

In California, Slater's mother said her son was justified.

"He had a very small meltdown," she said. "I think he deserves to be able to have that meltdown."

Reporters have been following him all day and all night. He apparently told a New York Times reporter after posting bail that he had always wanted to pull the lever of the escape chute.

He faces criminal mischief and reckless endangerment charges. Slater is due back in court September 7, 2010.

Meantime, JetBlue isn't saying much about the incident (probably for legal reasons), but it did poke fun at the situation a bit in its blog, Blue Tales.

"It wouldn't be fair for us to point out absurdities in other corners of the industry without acknowledging when it's about us. Well, this week's news certainly falls into that category," the blog post reads. "While we can't discuss the details of what is an ongoing investigation, plenty of others have already formed opinions on the matter. Like, the entire Internet."

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Angry America
August 11, 2010

Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who probably found one of the most dramatic ways to quit a job ever, walked out of jail this evening after his $2,500 bail wa posted.

After he was released, Slater was picked up by a minivan and driven away, New York City Department of Correction spokesman Stephen Morello said. He did not have details on who posted bail for Slater.

Meanwhile, JetBlue said Slater had been removed from duty pending an investigation.

The 38-year-old flight attendant, who on Monday allegedly cursed out an entire aircraft, grabbed a beer and then exited the plane by deploying the emergency slide, appeared in court this morning with a grin on his face.

As JetBlue Flight 1052 from Pittsburgh was taxiing to a gate at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, Slater tired to assist a woman who was struggling with her carry-on luggage, his lawyer Howard Turman told a judge in Queens today.

An argument that evidently began in Pittsburgh erupted again in New York, according to Slater's lawyer. Slater believes the middle-aged woman "maliciously" hit him on his head with her luggage, Turman said.

That's when Slater apparently grabbed the plane's intercom and made an expletive-laced speech, grabbed a beer from the galley, opened the door and slid down the emergency evacuation chute.

In a written statement to the Queens County District Attorney's Office, Slater said, "I lost patience after a female passenger had an argument with another passenger and then opened the bin door hitting me on the head without apologizing, I got on the microphone and said, 'To those of you [who] have shown dignity and respect these last twenty years, thanks for a great ride.' I accessed the porthole pulled the door handle inflating the slide, took my baggage and slid down the slide and left."

His lawyer portrayed Slater as a man standing up to a flying public that is out of control.

"This is an example of how airline civility is missing," Turman told the court. "People just don't have courtesy anymore."


Steven Slater's Mom: 'I Would Have Snapped, Too'

Slater's mother, Diane Slater, a retired flight attendant interviewed at her home in Thousand Oaks, Calif., by ABC News station KABC in Los Angeles, defended her son.

"I don't think he's going to be in trouble very long," she said. "I think he just had a very small meltdown, and I think he deserves to be able to have that meltdown if you saw the egg on his head where he got smacked."

Diane Slater told the station that the passenger should face charges for interfering with an airplane crew member, her son, and "smacking him in the head."

"I can understand why he snapped, and I would have snapped too. In fact, I probably would have snapped more than he did," she said. "I also don't think that people who are in the service industry should be abused by anybody, whether it be a passenger or anybody."

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Obama pushes higher education
August 11, 2010

Saying that the country's long-term economic recovery depends on a wholesale improvement in education, President Obama on Monday pledged his administration's best efforts toward increasing the number of college graduates.

"Lifting graduation rates. Preparing our graduates to succeed in this economy. Making college affordable. That's how we'll put a higher education within reach for anyone who wants it," Obama said in prepared remarks for a speech here Monday. "That's how we'll reach our goal of once again leading the world in college graduation rates by the end of this decade."

As his Democratic allies in Congress face the voters this fall, one of Obama's chief tasks is to remind voters why they chose him for the White House back in 2008. And that involves reminding them what he's accomplished, particularly when those accomplishments have gone largely unheralded.

The speech marks a return to the University of Texas, where Obama rallied as a candidate with more than 20,000 supporters during the campaign, to tout his administration's higher education record.

The government in the past 20 months has revamped the student loan system, done away with the banks that used to serve as middlemen and redirected about $60 billion to increased Pell Grants for college students and other education programs. Officials have also added money to the community college system, created a new tax credit for college tuition and simplified student aid forms.

Obama, speaking in a UT gymnasium, declared education to be "the economic issue of our times."

"It's an economic issue when the unemployment rate for folks who've never gone to college is almost double what it is for those who have," he said. "It's an economic issue when nearly eight in 10 new jobs will require workforce training or a higher education by the end of this decade. It's an economic issue when we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow."

The president did not announce any new proposals in his speech but sought to summarize his administration's higher education efforts.

The speech is "primarily a recap of what we've done," said communications director Dan Pfeiffer, though he added that the president was attempting to place those accomplishments within the "context of dealing with the economy."

That's important as the Democrats seek a reaffirmation of their policies at a time when many people are struggling with unemployment in a sluggish recovery.

White House officials said the president's speech was designed to highlight the administration's overriding goal when it comes to higher education: making the United States No. 1 in the proportion of students who graduate from college.

"Today we have flat-lined, while other countries have passed us by," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. He called the president's goal of leading the world in proportion of graduates by 2020 "the North Star for all of our educational initiatives."

Duncan and other officials said the United States has a long way to go, with only 40 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 having earned college degrees. To lead the world, Obama wants that proportion to be 60 percent.

That would mean adding 11 million more college graduates to the ranks of that age cohort. Even assuming some additional graduates just from population growth, officials predicted the country will have to find a way to add more than 8 million new college graduates.

"This isn't just a target for target's sake," said Cecilia Rouse, a member of the president's council of economic advisers. "It's really important that we have the workers that will compete in the 21st century."

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The Unpopular War
August 10, 2010

Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced some far-reaching proposals Monday for restructuring the massive budget at his agency, including getting rid of the U.S. Joint Forces Command.

The cuts could mean a loss of up to 3,000 jobs.

The current Defense Department budget totals more than $530 billion a year, and defense officials believe they need increases of 2 to 3 percent a year to sustain the force structure and meet modernization needs.

However, the recession caused the department to propose a 1 percent budget increase for next year, and the cuts announced Monday were intended to help hold down overall costs.

"We must be mindful of the difficult economic and fiscal situation facing our nation," Gates told reporters at the Pentagon. "As a matter of principle and political reality, the Department of Defense cannot expect America's elected representatives to approve budget increases each year unless we are doing a good job, indeed, everything possible to make every dollar count."

Gate's acknowledged the plan was "politically fraught," and congressional criticism began even before Gates was finished announcing the moves.

The proposal to eliminate the Joint Forces Command, which is based in Norfolk, Virginia, met with opposition from both the state's U.S. Democratic senators.

Sen. Jim Webb released a statement saying getting rid of it "would be a step backward and could be harmful" to the military, while Sen. Mark Warner said: "I can see no rational basis for dismantling" the Joint Forces Command.

The command, which has an annual budget of $240 million and 2,800 military and civilian employees, is one of the department's 10 "combatant commands." Unlike most of the others, it does not have a particular global region of responsibility, such as Central Command that is responsible for the Middle East.

The command is made up of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who are trained and equipped to work together in response to the needs of other combatant commands. It grew out of the old Atlantic Command and became the Joint Forces Command in 1999.

Gen. James Mattis had been commander until he was recently picked to become Centcom commander. Gen. Raymond Odierno, currently head of U.S. forces in Iraq, has been picked to run the Joint Forces Command.

"I told Ray that his assignment at JFCOM is essentially the same as his assignment in Iraq, and that is working himself out of a job." Gates said.

Eliminating the Joint Forces Command is just one of a wide-ranging series of proposals presented by Gates. Others include:

-- Eliminating some of the 65 military boards and commissions to cut the budget for them by 25 percent in fiscal year 2011;

-- A review of all Defense Department intelligence to eliminate needless duplication;

-- Eliminating the Defense Department's Business Transformation Agency, which has day-to-day oversight of acquisition programs that would be handled by others in the department;

-- Reducing funding for service support contractors by 10 percent a year for each of the next three years;

-- Freezing the number of jobs in the Officer of the Secretary of Defense, the Defense Agencies and Combatant Commands at current levels;

-- Seeking to stop "brass creep," a term former Sen. John Glenn used for situations when higher-ranking officers were doing jobs that lower ranking officers could handle. To address that problem, Gates is ordering a freeze on the number of generals, admirals and senior civilian officials at current levels.

Gates was adamant that the Pentagon must change its way of thinking about money.

"The culture of endless money that has taken hold must be replaced by a culture of savings and restraint," Gates said. "Toward this end, I am directing that any new proposal or initiatives, large or small, be it policy, program or ceremony, come with a cost estimate. That price tag will help us determine whether what we are gaining or hope to gain is really worth the cost."

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America's stagnant economy
August 10, 2010

For the second month in a row, the U.S. economy shed jobs as the government continued to unload census workers, offsetting disappointing gains in private business hiring.

The Labor Department on Friday reported a net loss of 131,000 jobs in July, an improvement from the revised loss of 221,000 jobs in June
The loss was due mostly to the end of 143,000 temporary census jobs in the month, but hiring by businesses was also weak, as those employers added only 71,000 jobs in July.

"The job market has lost steam and remains lethargic," said Sung Won Sohn, economics professor at Cal State University Channel Islands.

Businesses have now added jobs in every month so far this year, a total of 630,000 positions. But that works out to an anemic 90,000 a month. There needs to be an overall gain of about 150,000 jobs per month just to keep pace with population growth.

And private sector job growth seems to be losing ground. The modest gain of 71,000 jobs in business hiring was up from even weaker revised readings for May and June, but was still well below the nearly 200,000 monthly gains in March and April, when the labor market appeared set to turn the corner.

"The private sector is just not strong enough," said Tig Gilliam, CEO of Adecco Group North America, a unit of the world's largest employment staffing firm. "Companies are still cautious on the hiring front. They're taking a long time to make decisions. All of that suggests continued uncertainty and slow improvement."

The overall number was worse than the loss of 87,000 jobs that economists surveyed by Briefing.com had predicted.

The job losses from census jobs ending are likely to abate in the coming months. There are only 196,000 temporary census workers still on the job and they'll be phased out mostly over the next two months.

But the outlook for private sector hiring remains weak. A restocking in inventories that helped lift hiring earlier this year has mostly come to an end and retailers are likely to keep shelves and staff lean going into an uncertain holiday shopping period.

Temporary workers, often taken as a leading indicator of future hiring by businesses who use them ahead of expanding their permanent staff, has been trending down for the last nine months and fell to a loss of 5,600 jobs this month, the first decline in that reading since September.

Public sector job losses weren't limited to temporary jobs, as government jobs outside of census fell by 59,000 in the month, most being cut from state and local governments facing budget problems.

The Obama administration said the loss of state and local government jobs, and the weak private sector hiring, show that more needs to be done.

"We have made substantial progress from the days when employment was declining by 750,000 a month," said a statement from Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer. "But, today's employment report emphasizes just how important the additional jobs measures before Congress are."

But Republicans claim the weak employment report showed that the economic policies of the Obama administration have failed.

"For all of the effort being expended to convince Americans that their policies have 'funded' or 'created and saved' new jobs, the sobering reality is 18 months after the stimulus was signed into law, our economy is still hemorrhaging jobs," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Unemployment persists
The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.5% in June. Economists had expected the jobless rate to edge up to 9.6%. But that was mostly because of 381,000 workers who stopped looking for work in recent weeks, and were therefore no longer counted as part of the labor force.

That jump in discouraged workers may have been partly due to the loss of extended unemployment benefits for many jobless during the month. Without the incentive of having to look for work to collect benefits, many workers simply gave up looking.

The percentage of the population with jobs fell for the third straight month to 58.4% and is now approaching the 26-year low in that reading reached in December.

There was some good news buried in the report, at least for those with jobs. The average hourly work week increased 0.1 hours to 33.5, suggesting that workers who had their hours reduced were being called back to work full time. The number of part-time workers who would prefer to work full time fell by 98,000 to 8.5 million.

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Gay marriage debate heats up
August 9, 2010

A federal judge issued a ruling repealing California's Proposition 8 on Wednesday on grounds that it was unconstitutional, setting the stage for future legal battles questioning the initiative's constitutionality.

In the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger, federal district judge Vaughn Walker ruled that the proposition violated the 14th Amendment, which grants citizens equal protection under the law.

Proposition 8 was passed by California voters in 2008, banning same-sex marriages in the state.

In his ruling, Walker cited that the plaintiffs had demonstrated "overwhelming evidence" that Proposition 8 violated their rights to due process and equal protection and prohibited the official defendants from enforcing the proposition.

Walker rejected the argument that opposite-sex marriages were superior because of tradition and procreation and ruled that there should not be a test to limit marriage, said Christine Littleton, a UCLA professor of law and women's studies.

Proponents of Proposition 8 had tried to demonstrate how denying same-sex couples the right to marriage did not reflect a difference in treatment.

"Proposition 8 itself basically failed to advance any rational thought in singling out lesbians and gay men and denying them marriage," said Ronni Sanlo, director of the UCLA Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Campus Resource Center.

She added that the 14th Amendment forbids the government from denying a minority something the majority is given.

Doug NeJaime, an associate professor of law at Loyola Marymount University, said that the decision used the lowest level of constitutional scrutiny, despite its sweeping implication.

According to NeJaime, the defendants, Proposition 8 supporters, said that it was rational for voters to decide on this issue, but Walker said that it essentially came down to singling out same-sex couples.

Defendants appealed the decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a move that will place Walker's ruling on hold until the appeals court's ruling.

Whichever side loses the case in the circuit court is likely to appeal to the Supreme Court, which will then result in the final say on the constitutionality of the proposition.

And while Walker's ruling put the re-institution of same-sex marriage on hold while the case is appealed, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown on Friday called for same-sex marriages to resume in the state of California immediately.

"Essentially, in America, we respect the right for free people to make policy choices through the democratic system; in this case, defining marriage between a man and a woman," said Sara Tappen, litigation counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, the legal alliance that defended Proposition 8 in court.

In response to Walker's ruling that Proposition 8 had the intent of suggesting opposite-sex marriage was superior, Tappen said she didn't think anyone who voted for Proposition 8 intended to take away rights but instead make a policy choice they felt was good for society.

"What's radical was to allow a handful of activists to deny the core of the democratic system and force the country to accept a system to deprive children of a mother and a father," she said.

She added that Proposition 8 upheld a definition of marriage that had been established before the country was founded.

If the case does get appealed to the Supreme Court, Littleton said that the result will likely be close, with four justices likely to uphold the proposition, four against, and one justice, Anthony Kennedy, as the swing vote.

"None of us has a crystal ball," Sanlo said. "If we're looking at Supreme Court, we don't know (what the result may be)."

But for now, Jason Bernabe, a third-year nursing student and executive director of Won Together, a student group promoting the right of same sex-marriage, said he wasn't too surprised by the current ruling.

"This is a victory for California, but not for America. We still have a lot of work to do," Bernabe said. "The opposition is gaining ground and going to appeal, and we have to be ready. ... We have to remember that we're not completely protected under the law."

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Big win for gay marriage
August 6, 2010

Declaring that "same-sex love and intimacy are well-documented in human history," a judge has overturned California's ban on homosexual marriage as unconstitutional - in a sweeping victory for gay and lesbian civil rights.

US district judge Vaughn Walker ruled that the ban on gay and lesbian marriage imposed by the Proposition 8 referendum in 2008 - when it was backed by 52% of California's voters - violated the right to equal protection under the US Constitution.

"This is a victory for the American people. It's a victory for our justice system," said Theodore Olson, the former US Solicitor General who made the closing arguments at the trial opposing Proposition 8.

The trial hinged on the civil rights question of whether California's voters had a right under the US Constitution to make a moral judgment by discriminating against sexual orientation.

Supporters erupted in celebration outside the court in San Francisco where the case was heard, as the news of the demise of "Prop Hate" filtered out. But little will change immediately, as the ruling will remain suspended while Proposition 8's backers attempt to have their case heard by the US 9th circuit court of appeals.

Whatever the result, the issue will almost certainly be decided by the US Supreme Court, perhaps by 2012, according to legal experts.

Judge Walker's ruling in the case of Perry versus Schwarzenegger witheringly dismissed the arguments put forward by proponents of Proposition 8, saying they failed "to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license.

"Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples."

In his 136-page-long decision, Walker wrote: "The state does not have an interest in enforcing private moral or religious beliefs without an accompanying secular purpose."

In contrast, Walker's ruling said the opponents of Proposition 8 had "demonstrated by overwhelming evidence" that the ban violated their constitutional rights.

Legal experts said that the scope of Judge Walker's ruling was crucial to its chances of being upheld by the appeals court and the Supreme Court. His decision held that Proposition 8 violated both the US Constitution's equal protection clause, based on sex or sexual orientation, and its due process clause as a restriction on the fundamental right of marriage.

Some conservative commentators have objected that Walker himself is gay, although the 65-year-old judge was first appointed by the first President Bush in 1989.

Gay marriage had been legalised in California in May 2008, after a decision by the state's supreme court. But that ruling was overturned after the California state constitution was amended in November 2008 by the passage of Proposition 8, which declared that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognised in California".

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Pentagon wants Wiki docs
August 6, 2010

Online whistle-blower WikiLeaks has posted a huge encrypted file named "Insurance" to its website, sparking speculation that those behind the organization may be prepared to release more classified information if authorities interfere with them.

At 1.4 gigabytes, the file is 20 times larger than the batch of 77,000 secret U.S. military documents about Afghanistan that WikiLeaks dumped onto the Web last month, and cryptographers say that the file is virtually impossible to crack - unless WikiLeaks releases the key used to encode the material.

"There's no way that anyone has any chance of figuring out what's in there," Paul Kocher, president of US-based Cryptography Research, said Thursday.

That hasn't stopped bloggers and journalists from speculating. Some say the files could be the 15,000 or so intelligence reports which WikiLeaks says it's held back for vetting. Others, pointing to its enormous size, say it could be a compilation of the 260,000 classified diplomatic cables allegedly accessed by Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley acknowledged Thursday that the government suspects that WikiLeaks is sitting on at least some of its message traffic. The organization itself is keeping mum, at least in public.

"We do not discuss security procedures," WikiLeaks said in an e-mail response to questions about the file.

Editor-in-chief Julian Assange was a bit more expansive - if equally cryptic - in his response to the same line of questioning in a television interview with independent U.S. news network Democracy Now! earlier this week.

"I think it's better that we don't comment on that," Assange said, according to the network's transcript of the interview. "But, you know, one could imagine in a similar situation that it might be worth ensuring that important parts of history do not disappear."

Cryptographers say that the file was likely made using a 256-bit encryption standard known as AES256, which the U.S. government and others employ to mask some of their most sensitive data.

"It is widely viewed as extremely strong," said crypotgraphy pioneer Whitfield Diffie, of Britain's Royal Holloway College. He said there were no known instances of anyone being able to beat the standard.

Kocher, of Cryptography Research, agreed, saying that the only conceivable way anyone outside of WikiLeaks could decode "Insurance" was if Assange and his colleagues had used a blatantly obvious password or experienced some kind of "catastrophic algorithm error."

"We're not going to find out what's in that file unless somebody reveals the key," Kocher said.

It's not clear when - if ever - that might happen. WikiLeaks has so far refused to discuss the file, its contents, or when they might be released. And while the group has boasted about sitting on a huge wealth of leaked data from all over the world, Assange has declined to answer questions about whether WikiLeaks has the State Department cables, and, if it does, whether and when it plans to publish them.

Manning, currently jailed on suspicion of leaking classified material to WikiLeaks in a previous case, has been quoted as saying that the cables would expose "almost criminal political back dealings" and that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would "have a heart attack" when the files went public.

Both Diffie and Kocher said that the size of the file indicated that there was a huge amount of data being encrypted, although what the original file actually contains is anyone's guess.

"The question is," Kocher said, "is it a bluff or is it something more substantial?"

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Emotions high over mosque
August 5, 2010

The debate over a planned Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero became a court fight Wednesday, as a conservative advocacy group sued to try to stop a project that has become a fulcrum for balancing religious freedom and the legacy of the 9/11 attacks.

The American Center for Law and Justice, founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson, filed suit Wednesday to challenge a city panel's decision to let developers tear down a building to make way for the mosque two blocks from Ground Zero.

The city Landmarks Preservation Commission moved too fast in making a decision, underappreciated the building's historic value and "allowed the intended use of the building and political considerations to taint the deliberative process," lawyer Brett Joshpe wrote in papers filed in a Manhattan state court. The Washington, D.C.-based group represents a firefighter who responded to and survived the attacks at the World Trade Center.

City attorneys are confident the landmarks group adhered to legal standards and procedures, Law Department spokeswoman Kate O'Brien Ahlers said. A spokesman for the planned Islamic center, Oz Sultan, declined to comment on the lawsuit but said organizers were continuing to work toward choosing an architect.

The mosque has become a national political flashpoint, pitting several influential Republicans and the nation's most prominent Jewish civil rights group against New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others.

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