Free Republic

The bedbug-infested building owned by the imam embroiled in controversy over his request to build a mosque near the World Trade Center site has been placed into temporary custodial receivership by Hudson County Judge Thomas Olivieri, who cited a lack of improvements as the reason for his decision. According to Tuesday's decision, the custodial receiver, Raymond Bulin, will be in charge of using the October rent money to eliminate bedbugs from four apartments, cap sewer lines in the basement and improve the fire escape ladder. The building, located at 2206 Central Ave., is owned by Feisal Abdul Rauf, who was...

The developer of the proposed mosque near Ground Zero has begun repaying the $270,000 he owes in property taxes. Sharif el-Gamal walked into the Department of Finance payment center at 66 John St. on Wednesday and said he wanted to settle his tax bill, a department spokesman said. He paid $35,449.17 -- 15 percent of what his real-estate firm, Soho Properties, owed -- and said that the remaining $236,327.81 would then be taken care of in eight quarterly payments.

While the Imam behind plans for a mosque near Ground Zero was jetting around the globe and advocating for his Downtown project, a pair of dilapidated apartment buildings he owns in New Jersey fell into such disrepair that cops have to stand watch in the event of a fire. The fire watch, at taxpayer expense, was revealed during a court hearing today when Union City lawyers asked to have two buildings owned by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf placed into receivership so that rent s could be used to fix dozens of violations, including inoperable alarms and sprinklers. Rauf skipped today’s

[snip] But I am also troubled by Obama's efforts to hector Jones into changing his mind. Everyone should worry when presidents invoke wartime security, or similar arguments, against constitutionally protected free speech, even -- or especially -- when the speech is offensive, outrageous and unpopular. Strictly speaking, there was nothing unconstitutional about Obama's campaign, abetted by an all-star cast of national security officials, to get Jones to back off. Presidents have free speech, too. But when was the last time an American citizen got a phone call from the Secretary of Defense urging him to call off a political demonstration?...

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) on Sunday strongly criticized Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam seeking to build an Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero. “He seems by his actions to be more interested in confrontation than in healing,” Giuliani said on NBC’s "Meet the Press." The former mayor alleged that the plan is hurtful to the vast majority of family members of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. Giuliani also said the imam has not been transparent about the project’s financing, and cited Rauf’s 2001 comment on CBS’s 60 Minutes that “United States...