Author: Andrew Sullivan

by Patrick Appel

Robert Wood sums up the tax benefits of marriage and divorce:

A divorcing couple can divvy up property tax free. Again, there’s no limit. So if you jointly bought a house, you can transfer your interest to your ex without tax.

Not married? In that case, you’ll likely face income or gift taxes. If you give your half of the house to your ex-partner and receive nothing in exchange, you’ve made a taxable gift.

(Hat tip: Kincaid)

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I have worked in 100 Church Street for the past 11 years.  Here are my experiences of the day and the aftermath.

On 9/11, I bought my muffin from the Farmer's Market that set up outside of the WTC around 8:00 am and went to my office.  When the first plane hit, we looked out the windows and saw paper floating down from the sky.  So my co-workers and I went downstairs to West Broadway and saw the fire in the tower.  People were screaming and my co-worker said that people were jumping out of the building.  At that, they said I turned white. I went back to my office and put on the radio to see if I could find out what was going on.  The second plane hit and my whole buildng shook.  Everyone panicked and went to the emergency exits. Upon reaching Church Street, I saw a plane engine in the middle of the road.  At that point I assumed a lot of my work friends were dead from falling debris, as everyone had been milling around outside.  I remembered from the first terror attack stories that they had tried to topple the buildings into one another like dominoes, so for that reason I headed northeast up to Chinatown. From there I saw the exodus after the buildings collapsed.

By that point I was cursing Muslims and Arabs and I just wanted them to die or leave our country.  I got through the day and the days after, learning that no one in my office had died.  However, a fireman I knew was killed, and eventually my brother-in-law died of cancer that may have been caused by the time in the pit.

But you know, after a few days my hatred of Muslims/Arabs went away. 

I thought of my Muslim friends and the business owners I had come into contact with and the kind of people they are.  Maybe I've been lucky, but the Muslims I've known are the nicest, most "Christian" people I have ever met in my life.  Maybe also it's the way I grew up, going to a Catholic school where as a white guy I was the minority (mostly Spanish), then playing basketball with mostly African-Americans, and then working with gay people. I came to realize that individuals cannot be judged by the actions of a few and that most people are just trying to get through this life and provide for their family the best they can.

Back to the neighborhood.  Upon returning in March 2002, it was somber, but you went back to your old lunch spots and you were happy to see those people.  Economically they were hard hit, and you wanted to spend your money to help these businesses. And many of the establishments, vending carts, and shops are run by Arabs.  I don't think anyone ever asked what religion they were. We were all joined by this tragedy and just wanted to get through it by doing the only thing we new how to do: live.

The one thing that annoyed me and still does to this day are the hawkers of 9/11 porn, the guys who sell the picture books of 9/11 and the aftermath to tourists.  This to me is the real perversion of the area.  A buck being made off this tragedy and people wanting to flip through this book, as if it was any other tourist site, and then go through the things they purchased at Century 21 and J&R.

Anyone who thinks it is solemn down here has never been.  It is more like a circus, with tourists and their  cameras and their purchases.  I guess they come to honor those who died, but it doesn's seem that way.  There is a Catholic Church and a Christian (Episcopal?); how many people are stopping into them to prayer for the dead?  I'm sure it is a small fraction of those who go to Century 21 and J&R.

To me, and I believe to most NYers, Ground Zero is a work site.  I can go weeks without looking at it and then as with last week I was shocked at how tall the buildings had gotten.  I don't care what they do with the site put up a tower, a public memorial obviously but also something private for the families who lost loved ones seems appropriate.  I just don't want to see it commercialized (key chains, post cards, books).  That to me is what seems disrespectful.

But life goes on. This neighborhood has become yuppie heaven, with more people living here then ever before.  But the shops still struggle, there are still homeless, still bars serving the construction workers, still a strip club, still junk stores and still a mosque – two further blocks down from the planned Cordoba center.  And if you walk by before or after afternoon prayer, you will see the Muslims gathered outside -  government and business workers, shop owners, street vendors.  Just more Americans trying to get by as best they can in this life.

(Top photo by Zoe Strauss. Side photo from "Hot Chicks Smiling At Ground Zero".)

by Conor Friedersdorf

Apropos my complaint that Gary Johnson isn't taken seriously as a presidential candidate, Marc Ambinder has a sharp post that includes this nugget:

People vote for politicians who sparkle, or who harness their anger; politicians who make them proud to be Republicans… or proud to be Americans.  This political dimension is related in some fashion to the leadership qualities we expect from a president, although there is not always a correlation between the two.

This is accurate, and unfortunate. 

Americans complain a lot about our presidents, and our politicians generally. In a way, however, we get the politicians we deserve given our bad habit of selecting pols based on how likable they seem on television, and disqualifying others for lack of sparkle. Despite my differences with Republicans during the last election cycle, I started to get excited by the voices mocking candidate Obama for affecting the optics of a celebrity, if only because that kind of backlash is necessary before we start selecting candidates based on their experience, policy agenda, and ability to govern.

Then the Republican base embraced Sarah Palin, and all the same people who mocked Obama's celebrity enthused about her star quality. One step forward, three steps back. Gene Healy's book The Cult of the Presidency (magazine version here) is a great first step in pushing back against this trend. Unfortunately, I don't know what the right second step is.

by Chris Bodenner

Ann Coulter is dropped as keynote speaker for a WorldNetDaily conference because of her plans to speak at GOProud's Homocon 2010. WND and others are also cannibalizing Glenn Beck over his quiet support for marriage equality.

by Chris Bodenner

Our RSS feed is down at the moment but should be back up shortly. Thanks for all your emails and patience; here is a video of penguins chasing a butterfly.

Update: fixed.

by Patrick Appel

E.M. at DiA says it as well as anyone:

It certainly would be insensitive, to use Mr Gingrich’s terms, to wave swastikas by the Holocaust Museum. But for this analogy to work, a mosque must be to 9/11 what a swastika is to the Holocaust. Happily, however, most politicians are reluctant to suggest that mosques are symbols of terrorism, or that Muslims are all terrorists.

Instead, the complaint seems to boil down to a vague sense that doing Muslim stuff near ground zero is an unhappy reminder of terrorism, because the terrorists claimed to be acting in the name of Islam. That smacks of collective punishment: I doubt, somehow, that Mr Obama or Mrs Palin would consider it insensitive to build a church near the site, say, of a cross burning carried out by the Ku Klux Klan or an abortion clinic bombed by Christian fundamentalists. I doubt also that they would want, if they thought about it a bit harder, to accept the 9/11 attackers’ assertion that they were acting on behalf of their Muslim brothers.

by Conor Friedersdorf

Claire Berlinski responds to my earlier post on the Imam behind the Park51 project, and makes a persuasive case that whatever his intentions — and I still see no convincing evidence that they are malign — it is a fool's errand to associate with Hizb ut-Tahrir, a case that is only bolstered by this BBC piece I found while trying to read up on the group.

I'd be interested to hear why he attended a conference that they sponsored. [See correction below — he didn't.] It would certainly clarify this discussion. Ms. Berlinski has already made inquiries, and I'm going to do the same. In general, I'd very much benefit from a better understanding of the attitudes, pressures, and perspective of people who see themselves as bridge-builders between Islam and the west. The last time I embarked on that particular intellectual project I read "Whose Afraid of Tariq Ramadan" in The New Republic, and I was so exhausted by the end that I didn't read anything else.

Any reader recommendations on this subject?

UPDATE: Clare Berlinski issues a correction:

Imam Feisal was not at a conference sponsored by Hizb ut-Tahrir, just a conference where some members of Hizb ut-Tahrir were present. I still wouldn't have gone, if I were him, just knowing they would be there. but that's not quite the same as accepting an invitation to their conference.

This makes me think my initial position was correct. A necessary part of persuading people to abandon radical Islam is engaging people who aren't entirely on your side.

by Patrick Appel

That's what Richard Florida suggests. Avent dilutes this:

Commutes of [over an hour] are relatively rare, and they’re also associated with declining incomes. Someone who has a two-hour commute experiences much more stress than someone with a 46-60 minute commute (who is roughly as stressed as someone with a 21-30 minute commute). They might be stressed by the commute, or they might be stressed by the set of circumstances that led them to live so far away from their job — low income levels in an expensive city, economically-induced household immobility, and so on.

Navarre, Florida, 7 am