Obama Calls for Americans to Remember 9/11

President Barack Obama wants Americans to mark the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks by recapturing the sense of common purpose felt on that dreadful day.

"If there is a lesson to be drawn on this anniversary, it is this: We are one nation — one people — bound not only by grief, but by a set of common ideals," the president said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address.

President Obama will onserve the day nearly 3,000 people died in terrorist jetliner attacks with a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., the time the first plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City. The president also planned to attend a memorial service at the Pentagon and participate in a service project in the Washington area.

First lady Michelle Obama was to join former first lady Laura Bush in Shanksville, Pa., where the fourth plane crashed after passengers rushed the cockpit. Vice President Joe Biden is in New York for the service at ground zero.

At a White House news conference Friday Obama denounced the threatened Quran burning, said Muslims have the same right as any other religion to build near ground zero and issued a full-throated appeal for religious tolerance, reminding Americans: "We are not at war against Islam."

In the GOP's weekly address, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., echoed Obama's plea for a common purpose. Kyl called for the country to "recapture the unity that allowed us to come together as a nation to confront a determined enemy."

Who Said L.A. Traffic Couldn't get any Worse?

It can when the President is in town for a fundraiser. 

Drivers abandoned their cars, yelled at police officers and fumed as traffic came to a halt for the presidential visit Monday night. Some streets in Hancock Park were even closed to pedestrians.

One man went for a run just as the area was locked down and found himself waiting 25 minutes at a yellow police tape barrier to get back home.

Residents reported that commutes and errands that typically took minutes turned into hours-long ordeals. One particular complaint was that streets remained blocked for hours -- even when Obama was inside TV producer John Wells' Hancock Park home at a fund-raiser.

"What has occurred is way beyond reasonable and can only be described as negligent," L.A. resident Kevin McCarthy said in an e-mail to The L.A. Times.

The Los Angeles Fire Department reported no delays for emergency vehicles. But the LAPD and other officials heard an earful from angry motorists.