Rule of thumb: Once a sitting US President delivers a national address at a site, it ceases to be purely local. Sure, it still involves a locale, but that's about as far as that label is accurate. The WTC site is no longer an exclusively NYC landmark and memorial, any more than Gettysburg or Antietam belong solely to PA and MD, or the Arizona belongs solely to HI (in fact, it never belonged solely to HI, and I'm pretty sure the site where it sank is owned by the feds, too. ) It's not like the only people who died or lost family and friends on 911 were New Yorkers; hell, two of the hijackings didn't even HAPPEN there. To reduce it to a "local issue" raises the question of why the TV in the break room at my job in TX had nonstop coverage of 911 from the first plane hitting Tuesday morning through the end of the week. I mean, it was at the very start of football season; wasn't there a Longhorn game or some other more important LOCAL issue they could've been covering?

A LOT of people who've never been to NYC and never will were and remain affected by 911. I've never been east of Milwaukee, but I still need a passport to visit Canada or Mexico; didn't used to, but that was one of the many things 911 changed forever. It's a deep, painful and fairly fresh national scar, as the founders of this mosque clearly know well--which is why it makes it that much more unfathomable why they thought building a mosque on top of (or even next door, given their obvious desire for an association with 911) said scar was a good idea.