The Wages Of Sin?

Pastor Terry Jones has a $200,000 bill from the city of Gainesville for security costs it incurred (but, he claims, never told him he'd have to pay) in the buildup to his planned Sept. 11 Koran-burning.

Serves him right, many are probably saying. But let's remember that, in the end, he didn't do it. Some of the damage was done already, especially injuries in demonstrations by Muslims in Afghanistan. But it would've been far worse if he hadn't backed down. Because he did, for whatever reason, a little Christian forgiveness is in order.

As for the security bill, local police had to step up their planning dramatically because of the media frenzy over Jones' plans, which occurred as the result of the controversy over Cordoba House in Manhattan, which was whipped up as part of Republicans' midterm election tactics. So maybe he should send the bill to the GOP.

I Guess They Burned Their ACLU Cards Already

Authoritarians dancing chic t0 chic: Pat Buchanan wants to throw Pastor Jones in jail before his burns the Koran, while Marty Peretz, editor-in-chief of "The New Republic," isn't sure Muslims "are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment."

You Can Always Count On The Nixon Guy

Pat Buchanan says the federal government should arrest the pastor before he burns the Koran.

Just Say Yes, Imam

The whole ministry of Faisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind Cordoba House, is based on interfaith dialogue. Here's an opportunity to have some. Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida probably wouldn't have been his first choice. Cardinal archbishops and Episcopalians make much more presentable table mates when you're planning lunch at the club. But sometimes the spirit of God chooses our conversation partners.

Rauf shouldn't be expected to bargain away his controversial lower Manhattan site to keep an oddball pastor from gratuitously insulting every Muslim in the world and putting our troops at risk. But he'd earn the respect of many Americans, and some additional leverage in his battle to make his vision a reality, by taking the meeting.

The Lapping Flames In Gainesville

Worried that the Florida Koran-burning may be on after all, Andrew Sullivan frets apocalyptically:

We live in an era of religious fundamentalism and fanaticism, exploited, used and manipulated by politicians, for their own purposes, and used by the media for its own. This has always been a dangerous and toxic combination, inimical to liberal society, dangerous to secular democratic politics, and today, something that can also lead to global warfare and destruction on an unimaginable scale.

While anything's possible, it's hard to imagine Pastor Jones' comic opera escalating quite to that extent (though they probably said the same thing when Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914, before the worst war in history ensued). I've felt for the last two days that Jones was feeling so much heat that he was looking for a way out, hence his jumping to take a deal that he hadn't even been offered.

He's now implying that he might go ahead with the bonfire after all. The smarter move would be to take the meeting he's evidently been offered with Faisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind Cordoba House in New York City. It speaks well of Rauf's sense of civic responsibility that he's willing to engage with Jones at all in view of the moral inequivalency of their projects. Because Rauf is obviously a class act, Jones has blundered into a richly undeserved moment of respectability. Let's hope his second 15 minutes go better than his first.