Trump: 'Absolutely no choice' but to close mosques"

The United States will have "absolutely no choice" but to close down some mosques where "some bad things are happening," Donald Trump said in a recent interview, explaining his rationale for doing so.

"Nobody wants to say this and nobody wants to shut down religious institutions or anything, but you know, you understand it. A lot of people understand it. We’re going to have no choice," the Republican presidential said in an interview from Trump Tower on Fox News' "Hannity" on Tuesday night.

Is this guy an idiot?

Does he really think that terrorists won't meet if mosques are closed?

One would think that it will push some religious Muslims who are not radical  into the hands of the extremists if their mosques are closed.

And if "bad things" are going on in some mosques wouldn't that be any easy place to monitor the activities versus if the bad guys go deeper underground.

Trump is a dangerous nut,

The man needs a good dose of Judge Napolitano:

In 1798, the same generation — in some cases the same human beings — that wrote in the First Amendment that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech” also enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which punished speech critical of the government. Abraham Lincoln locked people up for speaking out against the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson locked people up for singing German beer hall songs during World War I. FDR locked people up just for being Japanese-Americans in World War II. All of this was later condemned by courts or Congresses — and surely by enlightened public opinion.

It is in times of fear — whether generated by outside forces or fomented by the government itself — when we need to be most vigilant about our liberties.

When people are afraid, it is human nature to accept the curtailment of liberties, whether it be with speech or travel or privacy, if they become convinced that the curtailment will somehow keep them safe....

Moreover, the Paris killings, the Fort Hood massacre and the Boston Marathon killings are all examples of the counterintuitive argument that the loss of liberty does not bring about more safety. It does not. Rather, it gives folks the impression that the government is doing something — anything — to keep us safe. Because that impression is a false sense of security, it is dangerous; people tend to think they are secure when they are not. In fact, the government’s reading everyone’s emails and listening to everyone’s telephone calls is making us less safe because a government intent on monitoring our every move suffers from data overload.

Because government is buried in too much data about too many folks, it loses sight of the moves of the bad guys. Add to this the historical phenomenon that liberty lost is rarely returned — as a new generation accustomed to surveillance attains majority, surveillance seems the norm — and you have a dangerous stew of tyranny. Just look at the Patriot Act, which permits federal agents to bypass the courts and write their own search warrants. It has had three sunsets since 2001, only to be re-enacted just prior to the onset of each — and re-enacted for a longer period of time each time.

Since the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris in January, the police in France have been able legally to monitor anyone’s communications or movements without a warrant and without even any suspicion. Today they can break down any door and arrest whomever they please, and this past weekend, the French Cabinet declared that authorities can confiscate all firearms in Paris. All that gives law enforcement a false sense of omnipotence over the monsters.

Only good old-fashioned undercover work — face to face with evil, what the professionals call human intelligence on the ground — can focus law enforcement on the bad guys.

-RW