Pamela Geller: Eminent domain to stop Ground Zero mosque?

When was the last time you heard a politician talking like Carl Paladino?

Carl Paladino, a Republican candidate for Governor of New York, has come out against the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero.

"As Governor," Paladino said Wednesday in a radio ad, "I will use the power of eminent domain to stop this mosque and make the site a war memorial instead of a monument to those who attacked our country."

I like this guy. I really like this guy. If the Supreme Court could rule, in the notorious 2005 decision Kelo v. City of New London, that the government could seize private property for a private developer and then never develop the property, surely Americans should be able to use eminent domain to designate the Burlington Coat Factory building a war memorial.

That building is a war memorial since part of one of the 9/11 airplanes crashed into it, causing severe damage. That makes the building a war memorial, no less than Gettysburg or Pearl Harbor. There should be no mosque there, and nothing there but a memorial to the people that America lost to that heinous Islamic jihad attack on September 11, 2001.

Instead of a mega-mosque at Ground Zero, we should build on that site a museum dedicated to the 9/11 victims. That will give us the opportunity to redress yet another insult: the current plan for a 9/11 museum is several floors underground, like a dungeon. In contrast, the plan for the "Islamic center" at the Burlington Coat Factory site calls for the mosque to be on the top floor of a thirteen- or fifteen-story building, looking down triumphantly on the burial ground of Ground Zero.

I don't think so.