A hot-button issue

With all levels of government across the U.S. undergoing draconian downsizing (1) and over 40 million citizens surviving on food stamps (2), and with normally sober Wall Street Journal scribes like Peggy Noonan (3) and Paul Craig Roberts (4) sounding like Old Testament prophets of doom, it's no doubt very handy for the Powers That Be to have a hot-button issue like the Ground Zero mosque controversy to serve as a lightning rod through America's summer of discontent. Far less was made of the fact that human remains of victims of the 9/11 terrorist strike were callously swept up with the debris in its aftermath and summarily disposed of -- or that the phantom menace of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction served as a pretext for war.