Don’t play the bigotry card, Mike!

Mayor Bloomberg’s latest defense of the Ground Zero mosque is passionate and detailed and, once again, com pletely unpersuasive. Worse, his recounting of old New York’s history of religious intolerance comes off as a scurrilous attempt to tar mosque opponents with bigotry.

Reflexively accusing dissenters of prejudice is a tired and discredited trick, one especially unbecoming for any mayor of New York on this issue.

Calling the 9/11 attacks “an act of war” that left nearly 3,000 dead, including heroic first responders, Bloomberg declared, “We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting.”

Hooey and phooey. Nobody is denying anybody’s constitutional rights, and hijacking 9/11 to defend a mosque turns reality on its head.

Muslims freely and openly practice their religion throughout the five boroughs, a point reinforced by the decision of the Landmarks Preservation Commission to allow demolition of the existing buildings on the site.

The mosque battle, as I have argued, is a simple matter of location, a land-use controversy writ in raw emotion. The question is not whether there should be another mosque in New York. It’s whether one is appropriate on this site.

The mayor’s stance recalls his initial support for putting the 9/11 mastermind on trial a few blocks away. “It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center site, where so many New Yorkers were murdered,” he said before switching sides.

As the Anti-Defamation League argued in opposing the mosque, it is not “a question of rights, but a question of what is right.”

“Building an Islamic center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain — unnecessarily — and that is not right,” the ADL said.

The head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center took the same position yesterday. In response to my question, founder and dean Rabbi Marvin Heir said in a statement, “The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s position is that this mosque is the right idea, but at the wrong location. The area is the site of one of the greatest atrocities on American soil. Therefore, the feelings of the families of the victims of 9/11 must be paramount.”

Heir, on a day when his famed organization is opening a Manhattan branch of its Museum of Tolerance, offered his own historic comparisons, saying, “A WTC-area mosque would be akin to an effort by West Germany, after the Second World War, flying flags across the way from Auschwitz. Such a move would have been denounced by the survivors of the Holocaust, and inappropriate. No religion should seek to claim ownership of this area.”

Meanwhile, the mosque backers have already failed on their own terms. They talk of “healing” and “interfaith” dialogue, and now tell The Wall Street Journal they will put a 9/11 memorial in their $100 million project.

Yet the more they talk, the more it is obvious they are determined to force their presence against the wishes of the very people they say they want to help. The wounds of 9/11 cannot be healed by a unilateral action that instantly causes even more pain to survivors.

There also remain unanswered questions about the source of funding and the prospect of deeply unsettling images. Picture a swimming pool and a catering hall in the shadows of Ground Zero. Or Muslim calls to prayer wafting over the names of the dead.

If the backers really want to do something good for New York, the choice is clear. Move the mosque.

This swamp still stinks

“Drain the swamp” was how Nancy Pelosi described her plan to reform ethics when Dems took the House, and now the speaker is declaring victory. But like the skunk who shows up at the garden party and won’t leave, Charlie Rangel’s continued presence is a stark reminder that something is rotten in Congress.

It was bad enough that the Harlem Democrat got away for a decade with phony disclosure statements, skipping out on taxes and hiding assets, all while turning his staff into accomplices. It was only because this newspaper and others revealed his scams that Pelosi’s gumshoes were forced to rouse from their slumber.

They spent nearly two years in a probe that ultimately broke little ground beyond what the newspapers had already revealed. Still, the findings built a strong legal case, so there was reason to hope Pelosi intended to send a message to her members that there were no sacred cows, Rangel included.

No such luck. Hope has been dashed and the sacred cows remain fat and happy.

Despite the serious charges against Rangel, some of which could be felonies, the House proposes to punish him with a mere reprimand. Which means it intends to wag a finger at him and say: Tsk, tsk, don’t do it again, please.

That’s it, crime but no punishment. The swamp is as the swamp does.

“This was a terrible place,” Pelosi said the other day in defending her leadership.

Past tense is the wrong tense. The House remains a terrible place.

(F)RISKY BUSINESS

In justifying misguided legislation he signed that forces the NYPD to erase the names of the innocent from its stop-and-frisk data base after one year, Gov. Paterson is offering riveting tales about the three times he was stopped and questioned by cops.

His office later conceded the gov left out two key facts. First, the stops took place at least 20 years ago. Second, they were on Long Island, where he grew up.

Details, details. As New Yorkers belatedly learned, Paterson never lets the facts ruin a good story.

I’m lovin’ it, Mr. President