Sen. Chris Dodd on FISA

Controversies Over Mosques and Islamic Centers Across the U.S. – Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. This map shows the locations of 35 proposed mosques and Islamic centers that have encountered community resistance in the last two years. Click on a location for a brief overview of the project based on news reports. In many cases, the opposition has centered on neighbors’ concerns about traffic, noise, parking and property values – the same objections that often greet churches and other houses of worship as well as commercial construction projects. In some communities, however, opponents of mosques also have cited…

Inbox Influence reveals your connections’ connections » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism. A new tool from the Sunlight Foundation would seem to seek to tweak that paradigm. It’s called Inbox Influence, a Gmail plugin that requires exactly one step: installing it. When an email message arrives — from a company, a political candidate, a PR person, your aunt — you’ll see statistics about that entity’s political connections. The plugin detects names in body text, email addresses, and links.