Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York, was questioned yesterday about this unethical practice; he defended it using the typical, disgusting, and morally repugnant justifications that have become so commonplace in our national discourse thanks to the War on of Terror.

The Daily Mail picks up on a story that has already done the rounds in the right-wing media in the US (the paper has in fact lifted it directly from the New York Post).

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg strongly defended the proposed Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero last August even as polls showed most New Yorkers opposed the project, he garnered some favorable media coverage and praise for his stance.

I have spent my career fighting for religious freedom and combating discrimination at home and abroad, first at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and now at Human Rights First.

Yesterday at City Hall, Mayor Bloomberg met with Ahmed Sharif, the cab driver who was stabbed by a drunken passenger because of his religion. Despite the harrowing experience, and the lingering trauma from the attack, Sharif affirmed his love for NYC: “I feel like I belong here.

Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg is a candidate for anti-Loon of the yearM due to his consistent defense of religious liberty and steadfast support of the political hot-potato issue of the Park51 Cultural Center, aka the “Ground Zero Mosque.”

Thus, it is not surprising that a majority of New Yorkers acting on such perceptions oppose the construction of an Islamic community center and mosque called the Cordoba Center, two blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood.