The mega-mosque at Ground Zero

If anyone doubted Americans' capacity for self-flagellation, the Good People of Tribeca wonderfully expanded the limits last night, when a community board voted to allow planning to proceed for a 15-story Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero. “What better place to teach tolerance," urged one of the residents, "than at the very area where hate tried to kill tolerance?” This seems to have things backwards: it is not lower Manhattan that needs to show tolerance, but the Islamists who did their best to destroy it. What next--a Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor? A German cultural center at Auschwitz? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford