Marty Peretz, scraping the bottom of the intellectual barrel:

But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell has a long history of publicly promoting what might pass for Victorian sexual mores. But the Victorians probably weren’t this uptight.

Christina Bellantoni runs down the precarious electoral situations in which several incumbent Democratic senators find themselves. The situation is not as dire for Democrats as it is in the House, but you’d be surprised at how many Senate Democrats are polling below 50 percent.

This morning I was reading this article by Christopher Hitchens about the never-ending mosque controversy. And it occurred to me how this controversy and the larger one of the role of Islam in American life has created this very odd alliance of convenience — or perhaps better to say, shared viewpoint — between religious fundamentalists and radical secularism.

Now, ‘radical secularism’ has the sound of a right-wing swear word. So let me explain what I mean. And the people who I’m thinking of are Hitchens, who I’m sure would embrace the label and Sam Harris. Whether or not we’re believers, most people who see themselves as having a secular outlook have what I think of as a benign, intentional inattention to the details of other people’s religious faith. We believe that religiosity is inherently personal, not bound by rationality, and in general, as long as people are good citizens and not trying to impose their views on others, we don’t look too closely or apply much scrutiny to the inner dimensions of their belief. This actually comes pretty close to what I think of as pluralism. Read More

I’m getting a bunch of interesting responses to the post below. So I’m going to post some of the more thought-provoking ones (to me at least) below the fold in this post. Read More

Dallas pastor says Islam promotes pedophilia.

Why do all the most assiduous scholars of Islam happen to be televangelists from the Bible Belt?

This time from Atrios … “whatever happens on election day, it’ll prove that america is, now and forever, a center right country”

Rabbi David Saperstein, the chief spokesman for Reform Judaism in Washington, DC, says that President Obama and Attorney General Holder must speak out against the anti-Islamic furor afoot in the current. He made his comments in an exclusive interview with TPM after a meeting Holder held at the DOJ on the topic of anti-Muslim violence. See the video.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf makes his case on the OpEd page of the Times.

At this point, if you follow the available evidence, it seems likely that the Democrats will get a severe beating on election day. Absent some rebound, it seems highly likely that the Dems will lose control of the House of Representatives. And it even seems possible now that they could lose control of the Senate. On its face, it doesn’t seem clear that this should necessarily have such bad effects since President Obama can veto anything that moves through a Republican Congress. And it’s even argued that having a Republican Congress to pivot against could better President Obama’s chances of reelection in 2012. Finally, I think most partisans and analysts on both sides of the equation recognize that the story of this election, overwhelmingly, is the economy and the continuing devastating levels of unemployment.

As far as it goes, I suspect each of these suppositions are accurate.

What I’m curious about, though, is whether the Dems are ready for the sheer, shuddering, really just deafening chorus of defeatism and ideological self-doubt Democrats are going to face on November 3rd. I’ve learned from experience that you simply cannot make logical, linear predictions about how these events will play out. I’ve also learned, as much as each partisan side likes to grouse about its own tough luck, that Dems have a much tougher time dealing with those moments. Read More