With everyone and the janitor’s cat suddenly having a heartfelt and profound opinion on the Cordoba House Community Center (aka the Al Queda Rec Center & Ground Zero Mosque) it’s just all over the map.

Howard Dean, once upon a time smart, progressive and considerate guy, has decided to sign up for an empty slot on Team Clueless Bigots with his claim that:

This isn’t about the right of Muslims to have a worship center — or Jews or Christians or anybody else — to have a place to worship, or any place around Ground Zero. This is something we ought to be able to work out with people of good faith. And we have to understand that it is a real affront to people who’ve lost their lives, including Muslims. That site doesn’t belong to any particular religion, it belongs to all Americans and all faiths.

That was in a conversation with Dan Goodman on WABC earlier today (Politico covers it here). Okay, Howard. let’s start with some definitions.

“This is something we ought to be able to work out with people of good faith” — who is “we” Howard, why are “we” working this out? There’s a process for this sort of thing, and not surprisingly, perhaps, it involves the zoning board for lower Manhattan, not the former governor of Vermont and his fellow travellers in speculation and random fabulation about affronts and good faith.

“That site” — what exactly are you talking about? How many blocks is your particular “muslim-free safe zone” from ground zero?

And “affront to people who’ve lost their lives, including muslims”? Well, if they’re dead, they probably don’t give a shit, Howard, and as for their next of kin, how can you claim to know what affronts them? Are you channeling or is this just wild conjecture to get some air time? You may be affronted, along with random wingnuts across the entire nation, most of whom didn’t lose anybody on 9/11, but all of whom seem awfully affronted. That doesn’t mean we need to care what some random teabagger from San Diego thinks is or isn’t an affront.

And, no offense, but it doesn’t necessarily matter if the widow of a 9/11 victim is affronted. This is really not something that can or should be put to an emotional vote — either there’s a rational, sane, logically compelling, legally sound reason for denying the Cordoba House their project site, or there’s not, in which case you and thousands of others may well be affronted, but that really shouldn’t impact the project.

All of which brings me to part two of today’s interesting times: Bush lawyer and all-around conservative hard-ass, Ted Olson, who lost his wife in 9/11, comes out in support of the Cordoba House project’s right to build:

I do believe that people of all religions have a right to build edifices or structures, 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.

Yes, that’s right: Ted Olson, lawyer to the rich, obnoxious and very powerful, turns out to be more level-headed, compassionate and rational than Howard “screaming progressive” Dean from the great Socialist state of Vermont. Because while they both say essentially the same vague stuff about freedom of religion, Olson rightly leaves it as a straightforward zoning issue, while Dean has to go all finger wagging on us and add the bit about “the evil mooslims should just go away if they know what’s good for them”. That’s his fail.

Go figure.