James J. Kilpatrick, Conservative Voice in Print and on TV, Dies at 89 [NYT]

Update: The not-mosque backers are disputing the Haaretz story. See below.

We don’t know why (or how) Haaretz is breaking this news, but here it is:

After weeks of heated debate over plans for an Islamic community center near Ground Zero — the site of the 9/11 attacks on New York — it seems Muslim leaders will soon back down, agreeing to move to a new site.

The decision follows a high-profile campaign against the project that included advertisements on New York buses showing images of the burning Twin Towers, an iconic landmark razed when al-Qaida terrorists flew packed passenger planes into them in 2001. The New York Republican party is also said to be planning a hostile television campaign.

Sources in New York said on Monday that Muslim religious and business leaders will announce plans to abandon the project in the next few days.

But not before Harry Reid hands over his nuts to Pam Geller:

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We had this bright idea the other day to browse Google Street View for the area around Ground Zero, noting establishments that, by lack of national outcry, meet the standards for respectable presence. Happily, someone about three thousand miles closer did the footwork for us.

Less happily, Traditional Serial Marriage spokesman Newt Gingrich won’t shut the fuck up:

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“The Supreme Court has upheld a $20,000 fine against a leader of the movement challenging President Barack Obama’s citizenship. The high court on Monday refused to block a federal judge’s October 2009 ruling that required California lawyer and dentist Orly Taitz to pay the $20,000 fine for filing a ‘frivolous’ litigation.” [AP/TPM]

Buried in a footnote of the appeal of the pending resumption of Armageddon in California is a fascinating claim about what puts the Traditional in Marriage:

Infertile marriages also advance the institution’s central procreative purposes by reinforcing social norms that heterosexual intercourse — which in most cases can produce offspring — should take place only within marriage.

This isn’t just a passing remark — the Prop 8 sponsors spend a good ten pages dwelling on the subject. But it reveals a subtext to the issue that wasn’t entirely apparent in November 2008:

Prop 8 protects the State’s right to regulate fucking.

Not just gay fucking. All fucking. Or, to be more precise: All unlicensed fucking.

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I watched my Nana make them many times as a child, and as a young adult she let me make them under her supervision.  But like many grandmas, she never cooked from a recipe.  I wrote down what she did sometime in 1982, but that piece of paper is buried somewhere in my mom’s house. Nana died in 1984, so I had to suss it out, and here’s what I came up with:

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Following up on his mini-rant last night about the Obama Administration’s sell-out to BP, Stinquer DodgerBlue provides us with a full rant and more details about the deal with BP.

Last week, BP cut a deal with the Obama administration that means that you and I, as taxpayers, are now in business with BP and have a financial interest in having BP pump as much oil as it can from the Gulf of Mexico, off Alaska, and everywhere else in the U.S.

How did this happen?  Read more »