From Le Matin Jolt, as they call it in France:

Late Friday’s news that Obama had endorsed the Ground Zero mosque was surprising mostly in the timing. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had already held fast for several weeks to the implausible argument that this was entirely a local zoning issue and that the President of the United States had absolutely no thoughts or reaction to the idea of a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero; while that’s a crock, they’ve tried to pass even more far-fetched lines past us before and stuck by them long after no one believed them. (“If you like your current health care coverage, you can keep it!” “The stimulus will keep unemployment below 8 percent!”)
Sooner or later, someone was going to ask the president what he thought about the mosque in front of a camera. So Friday, Obama made clear he had no objections. Or at least it seemed that way, by Saturday, he was insisting he only meant that the First Amendment protected the right of Muslims to worship on private property.
Hey, no kidding, Sherlock. Very few mosque opponents have argued that they want the government to carve out some sort of exception to our national concepts of freedom of religion. Instead, the first objection is that these guys are treading on sacred ground and refuse to acknowledge it — see Krauthammer’s excellent piece — and the other is that the builders are disproving their own claims of noble motives by so callously dismissing the objections. These guys have exacerbated every tension, suspicion, and animosity that they claim to want to heal, and yet we get no signs of hesitation, pause, moderation or adjustment.
Byron York tries to keep score . . . “Now, there is simply no doubt that Obama’s Friday evening speech, in the context in which it was delivered, was an endorsement of the Ground Zero project. It was certainly widely understood as such. The headlines of the three New York papers reporting the speech were: ‘Obama Backs Islam Center Near 9/11 Site’ (New York Times); ‘Allah Right By Me’ (New York Post); and ‘Prez: Build the Mosque’ (New York Daily News). The lead of an Associated Press report on the speech was: ‘President Barack Obama on Friday forcefully endorsed building a mosque near ground zero, saying the country’s founding principles demanded no less.’ But on Saturday, Obama said all those listeners were wrong, that they misunderstood him.”
Summarizes Rick Wilson, “It’s a double walkback with a triple-Lutz spin.” . . .
William Kristol: “Obama (like Bloomberg) doesn’t feel he even has to engage the arguments against the mosque — because he regards his fellow citizens as emotionally traumatized victims, not citizens who might have a reasonable point of view.”
The Hill lets us know we’ll be hearing more about it: “The chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee believes the mosque set to be built near ground zero in New York City will be a campaign issue this fall. ‘It demonstrates that Washington, the White House, the administration, the president himself, seems to be disconnected from the mainstream of America,’ John Cornyn (Texas), said on Fox News Sunday. ‘I think that’s one of the reasons why people are so frustrated.’ . . . Voters ‘sense that they’re being lectured to, not listened to’ by Democrats, he said. ‘The American people will render their verdict.’”