Demonstrators and counter-demonstrators at a July 14 rally in Murfreesboro TN to protest building of a mosque.

Does anyone realistically expect that this isn't going to get worse? Nope, it only takes one moron to start a chain reaction and the odds are in favor of increasing violence as long as we have Fox News egging people on:

Federal officials are investigating a fire that started overnight at the site of a new Islamic center in a Nashville suburb.

Ben Goodwin of the Rutherford County Sheriff's Department confirmed to CBS Affiliate WTVF that the fire, which burned construction equipment at the future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, is being ruled as arson.

Special Agent Andy Anderson of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told CBS News that the fire destroyed one piece of construction equipment and damaged three others. Gas was poured over the equipment to start the fire, Anderson said.

The ATF, FBI and Rutherford County Sheriff's Office are conducting a joint investigation into the fire, Anderson said.

WTVF reports firefighters were alerted by a passerby who saw flames at the site. One large earth hauler was set on fire before the suspect or suspects left the scene.

The chair of the center's planning committee, Essim Fathy, said he drove to the site at around 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning after he was contacted by the sheriff's department.

"Our people and community are so worried of what else can happen," said Fathy. "They are so scared."

The fire was smoldering by the time Fathy and the center's imam, Ossama Bahloul, had arrived. Fathy was told that responders had smelled gasoline near the fire.

Just as you see in the demonstration video, there are people standing up for religious freedom:

Claire Rogers, spokeswoman for Middle Tennesseans for Religious Freedom, said the organization has planned a candlelight vigil in front of the Rutherford County Courthouse on Monday in response to the fire. The vigil, scheduled for 7 p.m., will encourage supporters and opponents of the mosque to demonstrate for a community free of violence, arson or other intimidation tactics, she said.

"We simply cannot allow the actions of a few destructive individuals to go overlooked by Rutherford County residents," Rogers said. "It's truly a shame that we have reached this point, but it is up to us to ensure the intimidation goes no further."

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Meet the Press was its usual strange collection of overly-flogged stories and opportunities for marginal political viewpoints to be propounded as if they're mainstream. But there was one small snippet from Dick Armey where he slid in his pet peeve: Medicare.

Since this is the second time in a week that he's returned to this theme, a reality check is in order.

FMR. REP. DICK ARMEY (R-TX): I believe the folks that want to build the mosque there are making an unwise decision. But I think, when, when I look at the 18 percent of the American people that are enthusiastic about this grassroots movement, we see this as while it's an important issue. It's an issue that ought not to be distracting the president from the critical issues of unemployment, fiscal responsibility, a nation headed for bankruptcy. And the larger issues that affect the future of our children make this issue pale. On the question of should the president be sticking up for the Constitution, our folks say, "Well, great, I love him sticking up for the--we should have done that on medical--Medicare," where, in fact, he trashed the Constitution in the view of most of our folks. And in terms of him being here and then there, it reflects again our fear that this president is whimsical and doesn't really quite know where he is on any subject, even the larger subjects that are driving our folks in, in the street trying to make change in America.

Flash back with me to the August 16, 2009 edition of Meet the Press, where Dick Armey appears on Meet the Press with Rachel Maddow, Tom Daschle, Sen. Tom Coburn and...Dick Armey!

Death panels, anyone? While teabaggers are in an absolute froth over "death panels" and seniors are trembling over the potential loss of "their" Medicare, a position that Dick Armey used frequently to stir up town hall uprisings and the like, Rachel Maddow quietly calls him out on his personal radical views then.

MS. MADDOW: This is a really important point. The anti-healthcare reform lobby thinks that Medicare is tyranny, OK?

REP. ARMEY: I did—I said...

MS. MADDOW: This is an—I mean, you said in 1995 that “Medicare is a program I would have no part of in a free world.”

REP. ARMEY: Right. Absolutely right.

MS. MADDOW: You said in 2002, “We’re going to have to bite the bullet on Social Security and phase it out over a period of time.”

REP. ARMEY: And I’m going to enumerate exactly what I’m talking about. Medicare...

MS. MADDOW: Americans need to know this is your position and this is the position of the anti-healthcare reform lobby.

Dick Armey and Paul Ryan march to the same tune. That's not altogether surprising, and Armey has remained consistent in his objection to "mandatory Medicare." But that's where his honesty begins and ends, because while he believes it should be abolished, he's also aware that Medicare and Social Security are: a) wildly popular programs; and b) not going to be made "voluntary". Knowing that, he used their popularity and the security they give seniors to whip up anger against health care reform, and in particular, the public option, which is where the whole "government-run healthcare" is terrible (for all but seniors) except where it isn't (for seniors only).

Meanwhile, Dick Armey remains healthy and fit, thanks to his Medicare which he cannot opt out of without also opting out of Social Security benefits, which he evidently has no problem receiving.

The only whimsy I see is Dick Armey's.

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Crooked Timber: EU-US convergence?

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It isn't often that truth gets spoken at Fox News, let alone a deep truth about the behavior of both movement conservatives and Fox itself. But UCLA poli-sci prof Mark Sawyer managed to slip one into the morning broadcast yesterday during a segment of America's Newsroom with Shannon Bream filling in for Megyn Kelly.

The topic was the so-called "Ground Zero mosque", and Sawyer was crossing swords with radio talker Ben Ferguson, who seems incapable of anything beyond basic talking-points regurgitation. Bream pointed to the mosque organizers' message of healing the wounds of 9/11 and wondered how that message got lost in the uproar. Sawyer, of course, couldn't help but chortle:

Sawyer: It's been lost because after that Laura Ingraham interview, you guys decided in your summer of racial resentment in the Republican Party, that you were going to whip this up, along with the New Black Panther Party, along with Shirley Sherrod, along with a bunch of other phony stories to get people all stirred up. And that's the point. Nothing's wrong with her message. Exactly what she's saying is exactly the America that we should all want to live in.

Good on Sawyer. I love it when someone says what needs saying, because it doesn't happen enough on teevee. (Of course, Ferguson not only couldn't respond, he then displayed his usual sensitivity by dismissing concerns that the mosque organizers were now getting death threats -- because hey, it happens all the time, right?)

Mind you, he limited the observation to Republicans -- but let's face it, everything he said was equally true about Fox News' behavior. Indeed, as we increasingly see via the money trail, Fox and the GOP are joined at the hip these days.

New York's governor weighed in on the Cordoba House yesterday, claiming his efforts at arranging an "alternate" site were close to fruition. Paterson might as well find an "alternate" bridge to cross the Alabama River -- why march through Selma when you can go miles out of your way and cross at Prattville? -- or an "alternate" lunch counter to Woolworth's, or an "alternate" drinking fountain, or even an "alternate" seat on the bus. As in the Civil Rights Era, there cannot be a neutral ground.

If I seem harsh, it's because I earned the right to be harsh about this. A few weeks ago I noticed a loss of feeling in three toes of my left foot; this is the latest sign of degeneration from the damage my lumbar spine sustained while serving my country. You'll excuse me if I take freedom very seriously, and not merely my own but that of others. To progressives, there is no difference; to regressives, the rights of one subtract from the rights of another. The relative distance of a mosque or community center or titty bar from 'ground zero' makes no difference to the zero-sum mindset, which is why regressives seem impervious to facts.

The president gets this. Last weekend he reframed the debate around Cordoba House by separating the question of whether Manhattan's Muslim community has the right to build Cordoba House from the question of whether it is right to build it at 51 Park Place. Polls show that most Americans get the first part, agreeing Muslims have a "right" to build at that location -- even though the same polls show a majority doesn't think it is the right thing to do. The difference is more than semantic.

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MN Progressive Project: Bachmann finally fact-checked by MN media

Corrente: It's all about the rents, part one million and ten

Where's the Outrage? Repo Madness

John R. MacArthur: Of the IRA and the Afghan war

Attytood: It's not about the mosque - it's America's war on the Other"

Esquire: Anatomy of a right-wing news headline

In the span of just a few days, Sarah Palin has demonstrated that her ignorance of the First Amendment is total. One day after repeating her earlier call for Muslim Americans to "refudiate" their freedom of religion, Palin defended the disgraced Dr. Laura Schlessinger. But in tweeting that Dr. Laura's "1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist," Palin showed once again she has no idea what they are.

With no sense of irony, the former half-term Governor of Alaska and the same woman who once accused candidate Hillary Clinton of "whining" rushed to defend Dr. Laura not from government censorship, but from the "shackles" of public criticism:

Dr.Laura:don't retreat...reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence"isn't American,not fair")

For her part, Dr. Laura told CNN's Larry King the night before that she was quitting her radio show to "regain my First Amendment rights" supposedly lost after her staccato on-air use of the N-word:

"I want to be able to say what's on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry or some special-interest group deciding this is a time to silence a voice of dissent."

If that language of faux victimization sounds familiar, it should. After all, it's been a staple of the Palin persona since the moment she stepped onto the national stage.

Sarah Palin's first unfortunate run-in with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution came during the home stretch of the 2008 presidential campaign. During an interview with conservative WMAL radio, she regurgitated her usual talking points against the "elitism" and "filter" of the "mainstream media" before coughing up this nugget:

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

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I don't see how DFA could avoid breaking with Dr. Dean's position on the construction of an Islamic community center in downtown NYC. But Dr. Dean does have a point:

The grassroots political organization founded by Howard Dean after the 2004 presidential election has made a dramatic break with the former DNC chairman over the construction of an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero.

Democracy for America, a million-plus member organization that is active on a host of legislative fronts, formally endorsed the controversial Cordoba House on Thursday, one day after its founding figure called for the project to be built elsewhere.

In a letter sent to members, the group's executive director, Arshad Hasan, weaves together his personal history with a detailed explanation of the project's lofty and noble objectives. In a direct but diplomatic touch, he addresses Dean's opposition only by explaining that "well-intentioned" Democrats are "getting caught up" in the anti-mosque hysteria. "It's not helping," writes Hasan.

[L]et's be clear, the subject of the highest profile Muslim structure, 51 Park in New York City, will have a basketball court and a culinary school. Two floors will have a prayer room. The other eleven will host movie nights, performances, group dinners, etc -- it's basically a Muslim YMCA, open to everyone. These moderate Muslims are doing everything we could ask of them. They're trying to build a bridge in the communities they live in, trying to show the world that Muslims are cool and interesting and diverse, and proving that being a Muslim does not equal being a terrorist.

But they're being thrown under the bus by our elected leaders, egged on by some of the ugliest elements of the right-wing. Well-intentioned leaders of the Democratic Party are getting caught up in the fray as well, some of them seeking to find common ground with an implacable opposition. It's not helping.

This isn't just a Manhattan problem. Right now, there is opposition to mosques in Staten Island, Brooklyn, Southern California, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Illinois, and dozens of other locations across our nation. Where would they move? If public pressure can be brought to bear to take down the most high-profile Muslim community center in liberal NYC, then these other places don't even have a chance, Ground Zero connection or not.

Frankly, this isn't about Ground Zero. This is about America. This is about freedom. This is about people and there seems to be no place that Muslim people can go without being harassed.

The harassment has to stop, and that starts with you and me.

I figured there were some principled conservatives somewhere -- I just never expected any of them to stand up when it counted. I must say, Ted Olson is impressing me more every time he opens his mouth lately. I imagine he's getting the pariah treatment from his fellow Republicans these days:

Ted Olson, former George W. Bush solicitor general, attorney behind the case against California's gay marriage ban, and husband of a woman who died aboard the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, said Wednesday that President Obama was right about his analysis of the "Ground Zero Mosque" as a constitutional right protected by the First Amendment.

Olson's wife, conservative commentator and lawyer Barbara Olson, perished on September 11 aboard American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that was hijacked and flown in the Pentagon.

Asked on MSNBC about his opinion on the plans to construct a 13-story Islamic community center two blocks away from Ground Zero, Olson gave a response that served as a rather high profile departure from what has become the conservative norm on the issue.

"Well it may not make me hap-- popular with some people, but I think, probably, the president was right about this," Olson told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell. "I do believe that people of all religions have a right to build edifices, or structures, or places of religious worship or study where the community allows them to do it under zoning laws and that sort of thing, and that we don't want to turn an act of hate against us by extremists into an act of intolerance for people of religious faith. And I don't think it should be a political issue. It shouldn't be a Republican or Democratic issue, either. I believe Gov. Christie from New Jersey said it well, that this should not be in that political, partisan marketplace."

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Sarah Palin went all Pam Geller on us the other night with Greta Van Susteren on Fox:

Palin: Ya know, it sounds cliched to say the president is disconnected from the American people on this issue, but how else do you describe it? He just doesn't get it -- that this is an insensitive move on the part of those Muslims who want to build that mosque in this location, that feels like a stab in the heart of, collectively, Americans who still have that lingering pain from 9/11.

Oh please. These drama queens on the right need to explain to us just who among the survivors of the 9/11 attacks -- let alone those right-wing bedwetters traumatized by repeated viewing of the attacks -- sees someone expressing their religion freely as an attack on them.

We know, they're out there (right, Pam?), but then someone needs to explain why we need to pay any attention to -- let alone make important decisions based on their input -- these fundamentally irrational hysteria-mongers.