More pics of Vlad being a badass. (And Medvedev being boring.)

Ser Scot,

I do, yes. (That might make an interesting thread.) I also see clear analogues, as I indicated, between reactions to that Presidency and the current one. I think Mayer's piece is pretty good evidence of this phenomenon.

Ser Scot, I'm not here to debate FDR's economic policies. I'm merely commenting on the fact that when the business sector of American society has felt threatened by liberal Presidents it has reacted in very similar ways to the phenomenon of spending by corporatists like the Koch brothers against Pre...

Like most political fear-fads, this belief vanished into the memory hole with the re-ascendance (both electorally and financially) of the former opposition, and now we've cycled back to the Scaifegoating era of looking for mustache-twirlers to explain why Americans aren't as thrilled with their Ova...

How charmingly snide. I don't mind if anybody reads it or not (though clearly a lot of people have done so, since it's generating a lot of discussion and commentary), but I'm not going to discuss an article with anyone who refuses to read it.

Scot, Jane Mayer already thought of that response (or her editors prompted her to think of it): Of course, Democrats give money, too. Their most prominent donor, the financier George Soros, runs a foundation, the Open Society Institute, that has spent as much as a hundred million dollars a year in A...

What does everybody think of the New Yorker's expose of the "billionaire brothers' war against Obama"? Does the link between corporate, moneyed interests and a so-called grassroots movement dedicated to individual liberty bother those who support the movement?

rus, I'm glad you think it's a given that Islam may have something to teach us; in my experience, most Americans do not think that's a given. I am not personally a spiritual or religious person; I've studied Islam with an objective eye. It fails to move me. But I have an appreciation for the richnes...

Zarathustra, LM, that's quite a repositioning of the goalposts. One the one hand, mosque supporters are using the U.S. constitution and American definitions of religious freedom ... but when talking about "mainstream" you expand the scope of the discussion to the rest of the planet? Suppor...

Zarathustra, Perhaps "moderate" is just as nebulous as "sharia." Maybe I should be asking you what you mean by the former. That's a very worthwhile question. I should mention two things about the men we're discussing first off. A profile of Qaradawi (page 54 of the PDF) states th...

Zarathustra, First of all, Qaradawi is probably the single best-known scholar in the Islamic world today. His views are certainly controversial and I'm not going to defend them, although it's worth pointing out that he's quite right to argue that the secular state is anathema to the Islamic traditio...

rus, I'm asking what we mean by Sharia because it's a highly complex concept. Many of the 2.5 million or so Muslims living in the US (that's a low-ball estimate according to the statistics available to us) probably already believe they are living Sharia in the United States. Sharia is, loosely const...

Zarathustra,

In its zeal to appear open-minded and tolerant, the intellectual Left is willing to embrace Muslim leaders who advocate sharia, including the very extreme belief that people who leave Islam should be executed.

What do you exactly when you say somebody "advocates sharia"?

shadowbinding shoe, Question: Has the imam (or others involved in the project) made statements as to why they shouldn't comply with requests to move the location of their center in consideration to the people hurt by the 9/11 attack? Why it is the right thing to do to build their center in the propo...

I think we're at the agree to disagree stage. I don't think a man with the professional credentials of this imam could be any kind of meaningful radical; the organizations which have worked with him and for whom he has worked are of the most eminent caliber and completely in the mainstream. His asso...

Zarathustra, I looked at the "evidence," (it was Huffington Post opinion piece) which said nothing about the FBI clearing this man. I'm not even sure what that means. Why would he need FBI clearance? He was never given a job within the FBI. This is all the opinion piece had to say on the i...

Is it just me? Or is everybody ignoring LM's point (good posts LM) that this particular guy has been cleared by the FBI? Shouldn't that be evidence that he's not a radical? Thanks, Av. And don't forget the State Department speaking tour he's on right now, and Scot's point about the Daniel Pearl fun...

Zarathustra, I thought you were making a sweeping generalization about those who protest the mosque, namely that "we" are reaffirming what al-Qaeda says "we" are (intolerant cultural warriors). I'm connecting al-Qaeda's rhetoric about the United States to the message of Park51 op...

Zarathustra, That's the liberal narrative. Whenever they disagree with conservatives, we must be racist, bigots, fear-mongers, and violence inciters. It's the same damn play every time. Insult those with whom you disagree. They accuse liberals of demonizing Muslims, but don't hesitate to demonize co...

You're more interested in criticizing me than entertaining the possibility that this imam is not what the New York Times claims he is. How about what the FBI claims he is ? Do you think the FBI would use an anti-American radical as a consultant? Do you think blogs named Atlas Shrugs and CreepingSha...