“World Trade Center” on The Daily Caller

Its dramatic collapse several hours after the Twin Towers fell triggered a decade of conspiracy theories. (more)

NEW YORK (AP) — It was 8:46 a.m. and Wall Street was almost ready for business when the first plane hit the World Trade Center a decade ago. Dick Grasso, then chairman and CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, reflects on what it was like to be blocks from the Twin Towers on 9/11. Grasso left the NYSE in 2003. (more)

Construction worker and lifelong New Yorker Andy Sullivan has taken opposition to the Park51 mosque — slated to be built next to Ground Zero — into his own hands. Sullivan has led the call to get his fellow construction workers to lay down their tools and boycott construction of the mosque. (more)

1.) Everybody wants something from Obama’s SOTU — For two weeks now, yammer-faces and pols have rattled off what they’d like from tonight’s State of the Union address. The only thing they haven’t asked for is the moon. In an interview with The Daily Caller, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner added his own demands to the growing list of things Obama must pay lip service to during his address. “What I hope he says – and I think this will make some folks on my side upset – even if he has an innovation and growth agenda … just growth alone isn’t going to get us out of this problem,” Warner said. “We’re going to have to take on the size and role of government” and “the stuff that’s popular” like entitlement and defense spending. “You’ve got to earn good faith by showing willingness to do spending cuts,” Warner said. “There is some value in short term cuts that will at least show that we’re serious about doing something.” Obama’s more likely to promise the moon. (more)

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani told CNBC Thursday evening that he’s “absolutely” open to running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. (more)

President Obama on Wednesday urged the nation not to ‘turn on one another’ in the wake of Saturday’s shooting in Tucson of 19 people, including a congresswoman, and to be ‘worthy’ of the six who died in the attack. (more)

David Letterman took multiple jabs at Speaker of the House John Boehner on “The Late Show” Monday, making guest and NBC anchor Brian Williams feel “highly uncomfortable.” (more)

CBS anchor Katie Couric believes a “Muslim version of ‘The Cosby Show’” could open the eyes of Americans and perhaps put an end to all the ”seething hatred many people feel towards all Muslims.” (more)

There’s been much contentious debate and public-relations jockeying over the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, just passed in Congress and soon to be signed by President Obama. It provides compensation for the “first responders” of the September 11th terrorist attacks, which includes EMTs (emergency medical technicians), police and fire professionals and construction workers who worked in the rubble of the World Trade Center to aid survivors and assist with forensic duties. (more)

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the death of John Lennon. (more)

One of the more common visual tactics used by AGW proponents to scare people into thinking that AGW-induced sea level rise is a big threat is to show altered photographs and GIS models of a city near the ocean (take your pick, New York, London, San Francisco, etc.). These futuristic images demonstrate what the city might look like once global warming kicks in and kicks our butt, apparently without anyone noticing the advance of the sea. Take for example, Lower Manhattan, one of the more common targets. The top image is a future shock rendition from the History Channel “Armageddon Week” and the bottom image is a photo of present-day reality from Wikimedia. (more)

Developers of the controversial Park51 Islamic community center and mosque located two blocks from Ground Zero earlier this month applied for roughly $5 million in federal grant money set aside for the redevelopment of lower Manhattan after the attacks of September 11th, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. (more)

A new television ad campaign featuring the family members of 9/11 victims has succeeded in garnering what 9/11 activists have lacked for years: serious treatment in the mainstream media. (more)

Editors Note: Have a question for Matt Labash? Submit it here. (more)

In the wake of last week’s 9/11 remembrances and looking to the upcoming Mideast talks, it is a good time to reflect on what we have learned — and lost — since we took that sucker punch from a small group of al-Qaeda cowards. (more)

Nine years ago, on September 11, 2001, radical Islamic terrorists hijacked four airplanes and murdered nearly 3,000 innocent people, marking the worst terrorist attack on US soil in our nation’s history. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center rapidly transformed into an inferno, with trapped fathers and mothers calling their children in tears to say their last goodbyes — others leaping to their deaths in desperation. The towers would collapse later that morning, leaving behind an aftermath of blinding smoke and scattered debris. The charred and broken bodies of many murdered civilians were never identified, and America awoke to the horrific destruction caused by the enemies of freedom. (more)

The imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said on Wednesday night that if he had known how much strife would arise over his plan for a Muslim community center and mosque two blocks from the World Trade Center site, he would not have proposed it. (more)

As September 11th approaches, Americans remember the morning in 2001 when the World Trade Center turned to rubble. It is a fitting time to consider the nature of the civilizations that collided that day—and how to defend ours. (more)

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended on Tuesday a Florida pastor’s right to burn copies of the Quran during a public demonstration on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. (more)

The inability of most firefighters and police officers to talk to each other on their radios on Sept. 11, 2001, at the World Trade Center — one of the most vexing problems on that day nine years ago — still has not been completely resolved. (more)