In response to Gen David Petraeus’ denunciation of Florida pastor Terry Jones’ right to engage in a symbolic protest of the 9/11 attacks by burning copies of the Quran this Sept. 11, President Obama said: “Let me be clear: As a citizen, and as president, I believe that members of the Dove World Outreach Center have the same right to freedom of speech and religion as anyone else in this country.”

Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida lauded Obama’s remarks, saying America is “a place where you’re supposed to be able to practice your religion without the government telling you you can’t.”

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called Obama’s words a “clarion defense of the freedom of religion” – and also claimed that he had recently run into a filthy jihadist who actually supported the Quran-burning!

Keith Olbermann read the poem “First they came …” on air in defense of the Quran-burners, nearly bringing himself to tears at his own profundity.

No wait, my mistake. This is what liberals said about the ground zero mosque only five minutes ago when they were posing as First Amendment absolutists. Suddenly, they’ve developed amnesia when it comes to the free-speech right to burn a Quran.

Weirdly, conservatives who opposed building the mosque at ground zero are also against the Quran burning. (Except in my case. It turns out I’m for it, but mostly because burning Qurans will contribute to global warming.)

Liberals couldn’t care less about the First Amendment. To the contrary, censoring speech and religion is the left’s specialty! (Any religion other than Islam.)

They promote speech codes, hate crimes, free speech zones (known as “America” off college campuses), and go around the country yanking every reference to God from the public square via endless lawsuits by the ACLU.

Whenever you see a liberal choking up over our precious constitutional rights, you can be sure we’re talking about the rights of Muslims at ground zero, “God Hates Fags” funeral protesters, strippers, The New York Times publishing classified documents, pornographers, child molesters, murderers, traitors, saboteurs, terrorists, flag-burners (but not Quran-burners!) or women living on National Endowment of the Arts grants by stuffing yams into their orifices on stage.

Speaking of lying dwarfs, last week on “The Daily Show” Bloomberg claimed he was having a hamburger with his “girlfriend” when a man came up to him and said of the ground zero mosque: “I just got back from two tours fighting overseas for America. This is what we were all fighting for. You go and keep at it.”

We’re fighting for the right of Muslims to build mosques at ground zero? I thought we were trying to keep Muslims AWAY from our skyscrapers. (What an embarrassing misunderstanding.) PLEASE PULL THE TROOPS OUT IMMEDIATELY.

But back to the main issue: Was Bloomberg having a $150 Burger Double Truffle at DB Bistro Moderne or a more sensible $30 burger at the 21 Club when he bumped into his imaginary veteran? With the pint-sized mayor shrieking at the sight of a saltshaker, I assume he wasn’t having a Hardee’s No. 4 Combo Meal.

Adding an element of realism to his little vignette, Bloomberg said: “I got a hamburger and a pickle and a potato chip or something.”

A potato chip? Translation: “I don’t know what I was eating, because I’m making this whole story up – I wouldn’t be caught dead eating ‘a potato chip’ or any other picaresque garnish favored by the peasants.” At least Bloomberg didn’t claim the man who walked up to him took credit for setting the Times Square bomb because he was a tea partier upset about ObamaCare – as Sherlock Bloomberg had so presciently speculated at the time.

Gen. Petraeus objected to the Quran-burning protest on the grounds that it could be used by radical jihadists to recruit Muslims to attack Americans.

This is what liberals say whenever we do anything displeasing to the enemy – invade Iraq, hold captured terrorists in Guantanamo, interrogate captured jihadists or publish Muhammad cartoons. Is there a website somewhere listing everything that encourages terrorist recruiting?

If the general’s main objective is to hamper jihadist recruiting, may I respectfully suggest unconditional surrender? Because on his theory, you know what would really kill the terrorists’ recruiting ability? If we adopted Sharia law!

But wait – weren’t we assured by Fire Island’s head of national security, Andrew Sullivan, that if America elected a “brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy,” the terrorists would look like a bunch of lunkheads and be unable to recruit?

It didn’t work out that way. There have been more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil by these allegedly calmed Muslims in Obama’s first 18 months in office than in the six years under Bush after he invaded Iraq.

Also, as I recall, there was no Guantanamo, no Afghanistan war and no Iraq war on Sept. 10, 2001. And yet, somehow, Osama bin Ladin had no trouble recruiting back then. Can we retire the “it will help them recruit” argument yet?

The reason not to burn Qurans is that it’s unkind – not to jihadists, but to Muslims who mean us no harm. The same goes for building a mosque at ground zero – in both cases, it’s not a question of anyone’s “rights,” it’s just a nasty thing to do.

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