The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
News You Can Use
“How to Hack the Power Grid for Fun and Profit”–headline, TechnologyReview.com, Oct. 7
Out on a Limb
“$918,856 Federal Study: Bar Fights Tend to Happen in Darker, Dirtier Bars Frequented by Heavy Drinking, Less Agreeable People”–headline, CNSNews.com, Oct. 7
The Catholics Are Attacking
The New York Times finds echoes of history in the controversy over the Ground Zero mosque. It seems that in 1785, some New Yorkers opposed a plan to build a Catholic church in Manhattan:
City officials in 18th-century New York urged project organizers to change the church’s initial location. . . . Then there were fears about nefarious foreign backers. . . . “We were treated as second-class citizens; we were viewed with suspicion,” Father [Kevin] Madigan [now the church’s pastor] wrote in his letter to parishioners, adding, “Many of the charges being leveled at Muslim-Americans today are the same as those once leveled at our forebears.”
Indeed, the two situations are all but identical. Remember when Catholic extremists attacked Manhattan in 1776, just two blocks from where the church was later built, killing 3,000 civilians? Oh wait, neither do we. Well, we did say “all but” identical.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.
