Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-LA) goes there with a new TV ad on Sen. David Vitter’s, um, prostitution problem — or as Melancon refers to it in very Catholic Louisiana: Vitter’s “serious sins.”

Colbert couldn’t agree more with Bryan Fischer’s “no more mosques, period” declaration — but Colbert would ban a few other things, too. Watch.

Evan McMorris-Santoro looks at the very big role of King Coal in the Kentucky Senate race.

Nope, just because Justice Alito forwarded Orly Taitz’s appeal to the full Court doesn’t mean he’s a crypto-birther.

South Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Alvin Greene indicted on one felony charge and one misdemeanor charge for showing porn to a college student.

Remember the Insta-Urban Legend a few weeks ago about how paramilitaries from one of the major Mexican drug cartels stormed across the US-Mexico border and seized two ranches near Laredo, Texas? Well, the anti-immigrant crazies who ginned up the story were momentarily tripped up by the complete lack of evidence that any of it had ever happened. But now they’re back with smoking-gun non-evidence, no matter what local law enforcement says.

Our Eric Lach talks to the exasperated Public Affairs officer at the Laredo PD as he tries to prove that he’s not actually trying to cover up the Mexican drug gang invasion, as they take over America, one isolated ranch at a time.

We’ve been covering crazy politics stories for a long time, but this one ranks up there among the crazy of the crazy.

From the President’s prepared remarks at tonight’s Iftar Dinner at the White House …

Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities – particularly in New York. Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan. The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country. The pain and suffering experienced by those who lost loved ones is unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.

But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.

Full speech text after the jump. Read More

We now have official Washington’s response and take on the President’s speech last night stating that Muslim-Americans have every right to build an Islamic center on private property near Ground Zero. It comes in the form of Politico’s ubiquitous and closely followed “Playbook” email. As the author puts it, the statement poses a basic choice: is it “Obama delivering on his status as a breakthrough figure on American history”, by which we mean a feel-good affirmative action president with a foreign-sounding name or “elitist arrogance.”

It continues with various responses — mainly from chortling but unnamed Republican operatives marveling at the president’s being out of touch or courting a backlash from regular Americans but also one from Michael Bloomberg and a circumspect response from a White House aide.

The stand out for me was the response from what the author labels a “middle American” …

“This is too much. It’s not insensitivity that’s leading these guys to build this mosque. It’s a monument to their conquer of the site — just like the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem or the conversion of the Hagia Sophia (former primary church of the Byzantine empire in Istanbul) into a mosque”

There’s also what’s titled a “flashback” to what is apparently the most apt comparison, President Bush’s impromptu speech at Ground Zero two days after the attack: “”I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

It’s a quite a moment. We’re still hung up on the Turks turning the Hagia Sophia into a Mosque in 1453? Soon after 9/11 we marveled at how the bin Ladenites could still be so aggrieved over the abolition of the Caliphate in 1923 and the loss of Muslim Spain in 1492. But I guess times change.

No doubt the president’s advisors would much have preferred not to address this at all, wish it had never come up. But it’s difficult to imagine any president doing otherwise. We learn again that saying you’re for “democratic values” and freedom actually means being for “democratic values” and freedom. Are we in the tradition of the opening and plural societies of Amsterdam and London and America? Or the closed and authoritarian ones of Madrid and Moscow? The infrastructure of the Republican party has chosen to hoist its sail to religious bigotry. There’s no other way to put it. The president has done the only thing he could possibly do which is to state clearly that we’re Americans and we don’t discriminate on the basis of religious belief.

As the president said …

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

This is quite something. Politico just sent out a breaking news alert claiming that President Obama is now ‘backing off’ his support for building an Islamic Center near Ground Zero.

With criticism mounting of his support for the construction of an Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero in Manhattan, President Barack Obama on Saturday defended his decision to wade into the controversy the night before, but backed off from his previous stance. “In this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion,” Obama said when asked about his remarks at a White House dinner Friday marking the start of Ramadan. He did, however, emphasize that he was not endorsing the project, just the organizers’ right to build it.

And yet what did the president say just last night? Word for word …

But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.

Perhaps anticipating a response to this effort to create a false controversy, they write in their current front page feature …

But his comments Friday night were widely interpreted as an endorsement of plans to build a mosque a few blocks away from where nearly 3,000 Americans perished at the hands of Islamic terrorists on 9/11 – an interpretation the White House hadn’t disputed, up until Obama’s comments in Florida.

This was in response to the president himself clearly making this distinction. He’s not getting into the identity of the builders or whether he agrees on the exact placement. They have the right to build on private property. We’re Americans. We’d don’t discriminate on the basis of religion. Even the AP, more accurately, refers to the president “expanding” on his statement, though perhaps better to say ‘countering willful distortion.’ The CBS version of the AP story says he “expounded” on the issue. (ABC was a bit in Politico’s direction, though nearly as egregious.) Even with the aim of selling copy and appealing to its core readership’s biases, this stands out as a troubling example of organized lying on the part of Politico’s editors. It will be interesting to see who else follows their line.

Late Update: Notably, whereas Politico writes that the White House had made no effort to suggest that the president’s original statement referred to a equal right to build rather than support for this particular effort, the Times says that had indeed done just that. What stands out here is that there is nothing surprising about Obama’s stance since I believe this is the stance of most people who take a 1st Amendment stance on this. Who the people behind the project are is beside the point. Getting drawn into the design of the building is irrelevant. We don’t discriminate on the basis of religion. Call it the American values position.