The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon shook our nation to the core. Americans were deeply frightened sad and angry and they rallied around a President who at the time showed impressive certitude and calm.

We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That's life. And it's part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11 2001.

The courts are using the First Amendment to attack religion when they should be using it to protect religion.

The women's movement will present a growing threat to patriarchal religion less by attacking it than by simply leaving it behind.

Attacks on a politician's identity - questioning Romney's religion say or Obama's birthplace - tend to come when an opponent is desperate and can't sell himself.

It was not a religion that attacked us that September day. It was al-Qaeda. We will not sacrifice the liberties we cherish or hunker down behind walls of suspicion and mistrust.

In reality Republicans have long been at war with clean energy. They have ridiculed investments in solar and wind power bashed energy-efficiency standards attacked state moves to promote renewable energy and championed laws that would enshrine taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels while stripping them from wind and solar.

The attacks of September 11 - and subsequent acts of terror from London to Madrid to Fort Hood Texas - embody the most repulsive of human instincts the will to power at the price of the lives of others.

Let's not dismiss or attack individual ideas as being inadequate before we have had a chance to assess their positive effect as part of a whole solution.

With what all these people are saying do you think that anybody wants to be around me? They all think that I did this on purpose? That I knew that I was positive for so many years? I feel now that I'm going to be attacked if anybody sees me or if I go to the office.