Thursday’s roundup

Officials behind the so-called Ground Zero mosque said thanks-but-no-thanks to NY Gov. David Paterson‘s offer to help relocate to a less controversial site; a new poll out Wednesday says 70 percent of Americans oppose the project. The Daily Beast ranks the country’s largest Muslim populations (Detroit, not surprisingly, comes in at No. 1). Marketing firms, […]

Officials behind the so-called Ground Zero mosque said thanks-but-no-thanks to NY Gov. David Paterson‘s offer to help relocate to a less controversial site; a new poll out Wednesday says 70 percent of Americans oppose the project. The Daily Beast ranks the country’s largest Muslim populations (Detroit, not surprisingly, comes in at No. 1). Marketing firms, meanwhile, are trying to tap into the growing Muslim market for everything from shampoo to halal mouthwash.

President Obama, in a Ramadan message, hails Islam as “part of America.” The top DC lobbyist for Orthodox Judaism says thanks-but-no-thanks to a Friday night White House iftar dinner; memo to White House: Orthodox Jews are busy with Shabbat on Friday nights. A top official at the American Family Association says “there should be no more mosques, period.”

The judge who overthrew California’s gay marriage ban will rule today on whether to allow same-sex marriages to resume. Minnesota abuse attorney Jeffrey Anderson says the collapse of the Kentucky suit against the Vatican doesn’t mean at least two other cases are going to fall apart. Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs is headed to Texas to face child rape charges; Utah officials say Jeffs may or may not have to return to face a retrial.


The AP looks at efforts to preserve (not sell) land owned by religious communities; we had that story back in December. Tea Party fav Rand Paul apologized for implying that beer would be thrown at him during a church picnic; the church says its picnics don’t include alcohol. Oops.

A Jesuit-run school on Manhattan‘s Lower East Side is looking for new digs — in a neighborhood that has more poor people. Actor Mark Wahlberg tells Time magazine that he spends “a good portion of my day” thanking God for his many blessings.

Some 800 statuettes of Martin Luther are popping up all over Wittenberg, Germany, where the father of the Protestant Reformation started his campaign against excesses in the Catholic Church (Reuters photo, top left). An electrical fire swept through the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland, possibly destroying 10,000 pairs of shoes of Holocaust victims (the same ones on display at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC).

The Vatican has apparently rejected the resignations of two Irish auxiliary bishops who were caught up in the country’s devastating sexual abuse scandal. There’s been little reaction from U.S. nuns about new Vatican rules that lump together pedophilia and women’s ordination, but their colleagues in India call it “derogatory.” Officials expect 100,000 Austrians to leave the Catholic Church this year, in part because of the abuse scandal.

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